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October 14, 2022 - Danchenko Trial Day 4: the FBI ordered Danchenko to scrub his phones and erase all incriminating evidence

(…) The purposes of making Danchenko a CHS should be quite clear. The Crossfire Hurricane investigation was plagued with problems from the outset. The reasons for opening the investigation were bunk. Those problems continued as the investigation went on, with claims of Trump/Russia collusion proven unverified or outright false. (Thus the targeting of Flynn for a Logan Act violation.)

Those problems continued with the Carter Page FISA applications, first submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in October 2016, and which relied substantially on the Steele Dossiers (aka Steele Reports). The FISA applications were renewed three times – more on that later. Each application had its own problems, from FBI lawyers lying about Carter Page to the Court being generally misled.

Realizing its own misconduct, the FBI made Danchenko a paid CHS in March 2017 – just before the third FISA warrant was submitted in April 2017. This would allow Comey’s FBI to work directly with Danchenko in support of its counter-intelligence investigation against President Trump.

Danchenko being a CHS also served another purpose: it protected the Bureau and the Mueller Special Counsel from revealing their “sources and methods.” How do you hide misconduct? Bury the witness. (Techno Fog, 9/13/2022) (Archive)

On Friday, October 14th, we learned the FBI directed Igor Danchenko to scrub his phones and erase all incriminating evidence:

October 14, 2022 - Igor Danchenko Trial Revelations: Team Mueller’s Obstruction

Russian analyst Igor Danchenko walks to the Albert V. Bryan U.S. Courthouse on Oct. 11, 2022, in Alexandria, VA (Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

“On Friday, Special Counsel John Durham finished presenting evidence in the Igor Danchenko trial.

The most damning part of the day, if not the trial? Testimony that FBI supervisors within the Mueller Special Counsel refused requests to interview a source for the Steele Dossier: longtime Democrat activist Charles Dolan.

But first we start with the redirect examination of a witness from Thursday afternoon – FBI Special Agent Kevin Helson – who handled Danchenko when he was a confidential human source. (Our prior article discussed Helson’s investigative failures at length.)

Durham questioned Helson about efforts to determine the Danchenko-Dolan connection in the summer of 2017. By that time, the Mueller Special Counsel had been ongoing since May 2017 and had, on its own, taken part in the last Carter Page FISA renewal. And if you recall from our last articles, Danchenko had been an FBI CHS since March 2017. Once Mueller was appointed, Helson was the go-between, asking Danchenko questions posed by the then-Special Counsel’s team.

By June 2017, the Mueller Special Counsel had developed information that Democrat Charles Dolan may have been a source of the Steele Dossier. They passed questions about Dolan to Agent Helson:

Q         Who did those [Dolan] questions come from?

A         It came from the Mueller investigative team, particularly Ms. [Amy] Anderson.

Durham also cleaned-up Helson’s sloppiness. The previous day, Helson testified that Danchenko didn’t know the Steele Dossier was going to the FBI. Helson admitted he didn’t have any evidence to support his own conclusion.

Q         You were asked a question yesterday that you adopted — you were asked a question about, well, the defendant didn’t know that Steele’s reports were going to the FBI, and you said yes. Do you have any independent knowledge of that?

A         No.

Q         That’s just what the defendant told you, right?

A         Yeah.

Q         So when you told the jury that he, Mr. Danchenko, didn’t know that they were going to the FBI, you don’t know that to be the case?

A         I had no other knowledge that suggested that, no.

Q         Right. There’s no independent evidence of any sort, correct?

A         Yes, correct.

Helson was also asked about Danchenko’s lack of complete honesty with respect to his interactions with Charles Dolan and his travels to Moscow. As you’ll see, Helson’s answers also implicate his own failure to fully investigate his source.

Q         Did Mr. Danchenko tell you about his having been in Moscow in June of 2016?

A         No, he did not tell me that.

Q         Did he tell you anything about his having met with or seen Mr. Dolan in Moscow in June of 2016?

A         No, sir.

Q         Do you recall, sir, whether or not you ever learned the dates on which Mr. Danchenko was in Moscow in June of 2016?

A         I learned of it later.

Q         And do you remember: When you learned at a later point in time he had been in Moscow in June of 2016, did you talk to him about that?

A         No.

Danchenko’s June 2016 Moscow trip, where he met with Dolan, has significant timing because Danchenko flew from Moscow to London to give “a report”. Who was in London? Christopher Steele.

Durham also inquired about Helson’s October 24, 2017 interview of Danchenko. Helson described the purposes of that meeting:

“This meeting was — in part, it was a direction from the Mueller investigative team bringing up the discrepancies in the Sergei Millian matter, and they wanted me to go back specifically to ask the questions and get his response.”

Just so we’re clear – by October 24, 2017, the Mueller Team knew there were issues with Danchenko’s allegations about Sergei Millian. At a minimum, they were aware of the discrepancies in Danchenko’s claims about Millian. And how did Danchenko respond? By changing his story.

The importance is two-fold. First, it confirms to the Mueller Special Counsel that there are even more problems with Danchenko’s story. Second, it catches Danchenko in a lie that would, 4+ years later, be part of his own indictment. (Read more: Techno Fog/The Reactionary, 10/15/2022)  (Archive)

October 14, 2022 - Danchenko Trial Day 4: The testimony of former FBI intelligence analyst Brittany Hertzog

“Hertzog was with the FBI from 2008 through 2019 as an intelligence analyst with a primary focus on Russian counterintelligence. She described her role as an analyst who “looks at information and tries to identify trends, patterns, and investigative next steps.” She was assigned to the Directorate of Intelligence at FBI Headquarters.

Hertzog was assigned to Special Counsel Mueller’s Office in July 2017.  She described her role and chain of command with the Mueller Team:

Q         And what, generally, was your role with the Special Counsel Mueller’s team?

A         I was primarily initially to focus on looking into  reports that the FBI had received on Russian matters.

Q         All right. Did those reports have a particular name?

A         We referred to them typically as the Steele dossier.

Q         Now, as a member of Special Counsel Mueller’s team, was there a chain of command?

A         Yes.

Q         Can you describe the chain of command that you worked with?

A         I reported directly to SIA Brian Auten. Above him was Special Counsel Mueller. There were horizontal chains of reporting as well. So there was an attorney, a supervisory special agent, and then head of FBI personnel.

Q         Okay. So you had occasion to work with special agents as well, correct?

A         Correct.

Q         And who were some of the special agents that you worked with Special Counsel Mueller?

A         I worked with Supervisory Special Agent Amy Anderson and Supervisory Special Agent Joe Nelson.

Hertzog became familiar with the Steele Dossier, and with the parties involved in the Steele Dossier, once she joined the Mueller Team:

Q         And how did you become familiar with Mr. Steele?

A         When I reported [July 2017] to the Special Counsel’s Office, SCO, I had received background information on the investigation up until that point.

It was her job to “look into the Steele Dossier.” She described this as “trying to identify the sourcing for the claims in the dossier and, specifically, the national security threat with regards to the Russian influence piece.” Hertzog explains:

Q         And a lot of names appeared in those dossier reports?

A         Correct.

Q         Did you learn that there were a number of different sources that the defendant relied on?

A         Yes.

Q         Did you have a particular focus on any of those sources?

A         There were a number of sub-sources that were identified for investigative next steps.

Q         Okay. And did you have a particular individual that you focused on?

A         Yes. There was an individual named Olga Galkina who was — when I was assigned to SCO, was my primary focus initially.

Compare Hertzog’s testimony to the words of Robert Mueller:

How do we not conclude that Mueller lied to Congress?

Unless his own team kept him in the dark about their own investigation of the Steele Dossier?

The title of this post references “obstruction” by the Mueller Special Counsel. Just to clarify, we’re not saying that there will be charges of obstruction of justice from anyone on the Mueller Team. (We’re not going to predict what comes next.) By obstruction we mean obstructing the truth, or obstructing the efforts to determine the truth. We plan to dive deeper into this Mueller issue in the near future.

Back to Hertzog. She took investigative steps to look into the Steele Dossier. She investigated Olga Galkina. She also looked into Charles Dolan:

Q         And what’s your understanding of who Mr. Dolan is?

A         Mr. Dolan, to my understanding, having reviewed FBI databases, had connectivity to both Mr. Danchenko and Ms. Galkina.

Q         So your testimony is that you learned about Mr. Dolan through the various FBI databases?

A         I believe information was provided to me as background when I on boarded with SCO, and I became aware of more information as I researched.

In fact, Hertzog connected Dolan to Olga Galkina, and also to those who had worked in the Russian government (such as Putin ally and confidant Dmitry Peskov). She checked Dolan’s travel records, finding he had traveled to Cyprus (where Galkina was located) and also to Russia. She found Dolan’s link to Galkina, a “sub-source for the Steele Dossier” of particular importance.” (Read more: Techno Fog/The Reactionary, 10/15/2022)  (Archive)

October 14, 2022 - Danchenko Trial: An FBI amendment to Carter Page's FISA application was much worse than using the uncorroborated Steele dossier

FISA Court rubber stamps FBI warrant applications to spy on Americans. (Credit: River City Reader)

(…) The FBI’s use of the uncorroborated Steele dossier was not the FBI’s worst offense, however. Worse still was the Crossfire Hurricane team’s last-minute amendment to the FISA application that misleadingly framed Steele’s source network as one established during his time as an MI6 agent, when, in fact, neither Danchenko nor any of Steele’s other dossier sources had been sources during his time with British intelligence.

While Steele would later confirm for the inspector general that his source network did not involve sources from his time with MI6, but “was developed entirely in the period after he retired from government service,” from Auten’s detailed trial testimony, we now know that the Crossfire Hurricane team either knew Steele’s source network was not connected to British intelligence or knew that it could not, in good faith, make that representation to the FISA court.

For two days, Durham elicited testimony from Auten of the FBI’s attempts to ascertain Steele’s source network, including during a trip to Europe in early October, but Steele refused to identify his sources. Auten’s testimony in this regard proves significant when considered together with details previously revealed in the Office of Inspector General’s report on FISA abuse.

In discussing the process the FBI undertook to obtain the first FISA warrant on Page, the OIG explained that the day before the FISA court granted the surveillance order, the government submitted a “read copy” of the FISA application to the FISA court’s legal adviser for a preliminary assessment of any issues. The FISA court’s legal adviser asked the attorney working with the FBI on the application “how it was that Steele had a network of subsources?”

The government lawyer “provided additional information to him regarding Steele’s past employment history,” the OIG report explained; that response implied Steele’s source network came from his time with MI6. Significantly, the FISA court’s legal adviser then indicated the additional detail of Steele’s prior work with British intelligence should be included in the official FISA application to the court.

“That the legal advisor not only raised the question about Steele’s access to a network of sources, but then insisted that the FISA application be updated to include information concerning Steele’s prior government position, shows the FISA court placed great significance on Steele’s previous British intelligence work for purposes of assessing the reliability of his source network.” And with that misleading information added, the next day, Oct. 21, 2016, the FISA court issued the first of four orders authorizing the surveillance of Page’s phone and email accounts.

Given the importance the legal adviser placed on understanding Steele’s source network, it seems unlikely the FISA court would have authorized the surveillance of Page had the FBI either acknowledged that Steele’s source network came from his private work with Orbis or conceded that Steele had refused to reveal his sources. It was this final deception, then, and not merely the FBI’s reliance on the uncorroborated Steele dossier, that led to the illegal surveillance of Page. And, here, those involved in adding the last-minute, credibility-boosting footnote reference to Steele’s MI6 work knew full well that misrepresentation would score the bureau a surveillance warrant, making it an even worse transgression.” (Read more: The Federalist, 10/14/2022)  (Archive) 

October 18, 2022 - Marco Polo: Hunter Biden laptop report

There are, at the very least, 459 documented violations of state and federal laws and regulations on the infamous device.

For the past thirteen months, Marco Polo—a nonprofit research group comprised of six men from across the U.S. dedicated to exposing corruption and blackmail—has been writing a comprehensive Report on the Biden Laptop and the crimes thereon. Our motives and budget were transparent; thousands of Americans financed its production. We neither sought nor received any institutional/corporate backing. We were delayed for various reasons, but finished the dossier for 35k under budget.

At long last, the Report is complete. It has been sent to members of the U.S. House & U.S. Senate, U.S. attorneys for the jurisdictions in which the Bidens and their associates committed crimes, state and local law enforcement, and—for good measure—every contact on the Biden Laptop, which includes all of Hunter’s classmates at Archmere Academy and a portion of the current White House staff.

It is simple but dense: 630 pages. 2,020 footnotes. Broken up neatly into seven sections with the biggest focus being Business-Related Crimes. We believe that it is the deepest digital colonoscopy ever performed on a sitting U.S. first family.

To read & download the Report click here.

We will have much more to say about this in the coming days & weeks (and months).

Press coverage of the Report (so far) can be found at the following links:

The U.S. Sun (10/19/2022)

Kanekoa News (10/19/2022)

The Daily Wire (10/20/2022)

The Post Millennial (10/20/2022)

Sputnik News (10/20/2022)

Timcast (10/20/2022)

World Tribune (10/20/2022)

Just the News (10/20/2022)

Kanekoa News (10/21/2022)

Daily Mail (10/21/2022)

Valiant News (10/21/2022)

Law Officer (10/21/2022)

Newsmax (10/21/2022)

One America News (10/22/2022)

Blitz (10/24/2022)

Daily Mail (10/24/2022)

National File (10/24/2022)

World Tribune (10/25/2022)

American Wire (10/25/2022)

UncoverDC (10/26/2022)

The Absolute Truth with Emerald Robinson (10/26/2022)

Law Enforcement Today (10/26/2022)

New York Post (10/26/2022)

–Garrett Ziegler, Founder

(MarcoPoloUSA, 10/18/2022)  (Archive)

October 18, 2022 - Hillary Clinton served on the board of company prosecuted for providing material support to Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria

(Working archived link for The Canary article above)

October 28, 2022 - The FBI asks court to reverse its order or to allow for 67 years to produce Seth Rich laptop information

Seth Rich (Credit: public domain)

“The FBI is asking a U.S. court to reverse its order that it produce information from Seth Rich’s laptop computer.

If the court does not, the bureau wants 66 years to produce the information.

(…) In the new filing, government lawyers said the FBI never extracted the data, which it revealed as originating with a law enforcement agency. They said the information is on a compact disc containing images of the laptop.

“The FBI did not open an investigation into the murder of Seth Rich, nor did it provide investigative or technical assistance to any investigation into the murder of Seth Rich. As a result, the FBI has never extracted the data from the compact disc and never processed the information contained on the disc,” they said.

To produce the information, the FBI would have to convert information on the disc into pages and then review the pages to redact information per FOIA, according to the government.

If Mazzant upholds his order, the FBI wants a lengthy period of time to perform the work—66 years, or 500 pages a month.

“If the court overrules the FBI’s motion, the FBI wants to produce records at a rate of 500 pages per month. At that rate, it will take almost 67 years just to produce the documents, never mind the images and other files,” Ty Clevenger, a lawyer representing Huddleston, told The Epoch Times in an email.

“After dealing with the FBI for five years, I now assume that the FBI is lying to me unless and until it proves otherwise. The FBI is desperately trying to hide records about Seth Rich, and that begs the question of why.” (Read more: The Epoch Times, 10/28/2022)  (Archive)

November 2, 2022 - Classified documents from Biden's tenure as VP are found at the Penn Biden Center

Joe Biden speaks at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. (Credit: New York Post)

“Classified documents from Joe Biden’s tenure as Vice President were found in early November at the Penn Biden Center in Washington,  CBS News reports, citing two sources with knowledge of an inquiry launched by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The investigation into the roughly 10 documents will be conducted by the US Attorney in Chicago (shocking!), according to the sources.

The classified material was identified by personal attorneys for Mr. Biden on Nov. 2, the day before the midterm elections, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president confirmed. The documents were discovered when Mr. Biden’s personal attorneys “were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.,” Sauber said in a statement to CBS News. The documents were contained in a folder that was in a box with other unclassified papers, the sources said. The sources revealed neither what the classified documents contain nor their level of classification. A source familiar told CBS News the documents did not contain nuclear secrets. -CBS News

Remember when the DOJ raided former President Trump and made a huge deal about classified documents having been commingled with not-classified documents? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

According to Sauber, the White House counsel’s office notified the National Archives on the same day the material was discovered, after which the Archives took possession the next morning.

“The discovery of these documents was made by the President’s attorneys,” said Sauber. “The documents were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the Archives. Since that discovery, the President’s personal attorneys have cooperated with the Archives and the Department of Justice in a process to ensure that any Obama-Biden Administration records are appropriately in the possession of the Archives.”

In charge of the investigation is John Lausch, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, who will seek to determine how the classified material ended up at the Penn Biden Center (which received $54.6 million in Chinese donations after the Biden Center was announced in 2016). (Zero Hedge, 1/10/2023)  (Archive)

November 2, 2022 - Biden personal lawyer sends FedEx to Penn Biden Center for boxes of classified docs; The next day, NARA retrieves remaining boxes

Dana Remus (Credit: Andrew Harnik/AP)

(…) At least 5 White House aides, including former White House Counsel Dana Remus, were involved in Biden’s classified documents scandal.

(…) Joe Biden STOLE highly classified documents from a SCIF while he was a US Senator and Vice President. He had no right to store any classified material at his home or the Penn Biden Center.

Not only did Biden steal SCIF-designated documents and improperly scatter them everywhere, evidence shows he likely used them to provide classified briefings on Ukraine to his son/bagman Hunter Biden.

It also appears Biden is hiding documents from NARA.

According to investigative reporter Paul Sperry, records reveal Joe Biden had his personal lawyer send a FedEx driver to the Penn Biden Center to pick up his boxes of classified White House documents on November 2, 2022 – just ONE DAY BEFORE the National Archives (NARA) arrived to the center to seize the documents.

Did Joe Biden withhold classified documents from the National Archives?

(Read more: The Gateway Pundit, 11/22/2023)  (Archive)

November 4, 2022 - House Judiciary Republicans drop a 1,050-page report on FBI whistleblower 'politicization' disclosures

Representative Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), is expected to become chairman of the Judiciary Committee if Republicans take the House. (Credit: yahoo!news)

“House Judiciary Republicans on Friday released a 1,000-plus page report on FBI whistleblower disclosures on “the politicization of the FBI And Justice Department.”

The members called the report “the first comprehensive accounting of the FBI’s problems to date, which undermine the FBI’s fundamental law-enforcement mission.”

They also say in an announcement about the report that the 1,050 document “primarily concerns FBI abuses, due to the experiences and roles of whistleblowers, but also examines the actions of the Justice Department where appropriate for context and explanation.”

(…) “The thousand-page report builds on various whistleblower disclosures describing the FBI’s Washington hierarchy as ‘rotted at its core’ with a “systemic culture of unaccountability,” the report also reads.

The House Judiciary Republicans list as some of the “key takeaways” in the report as:

  • FBI leadership abusing its law-enforcement authority for political reasons.
  • The FBI artificially inflating and manipulating domestic violent extremism statistics for political purposes.
  • The FBI downplaying and reducing the spread of the serious allegations of wrongdoing leveled against Hunter Biden.
  • The Justice Department and FBI using counterterrorism resources to target parents resisting a far-left educational curriculum.

(Read more: JusttheNews, 11/4/2022)  (Archive)

November 5, 2022 - In his soon-to-be-released book, Biden laptop tech Mac Isaac, recounts FBI agent who tacitly threatened him

“The FBI took possession of the Biden Laptop—via grand jury subpoena—on December 9, 2019. The two agents from the Wilmington Resident Agency of the Baltimore Field Office who delivered that subpoena to the laptop repair shop owner (Mac Isaac) were Josh Wilson and Mike Dzielak.

Wilson and Dzielak have since attempted to scrub their online footprint, but Wilson is still featured in several articles. Locating a picture of Dzielak, however, proved somewhat difficult—and now we know why. In his soon-to-be-released book, Mac Isaac recounts how Dzielak told Mac Isaac the following—in a serious tone—after delivering the grand jury subpoena: “It is our experience that nothing ever happens to people that don’t talk about these things.” Well, Mac Isaac did “talk about these things” after Dzielak and Wilson (& the FBI HQ) slow-walked the investigation into the Bidens.”

(Credit: Marco Polo)

(Read more: Marco Polo/Substack, 11/05/2022)  (Archive)

November 8, 2022 - Judge tosses Vindman’s ‘witness intimidation’ lawsuit against Don Jr., Giuliani, Scavino

Alexander Vindman testifies before a House Intelligence Committee hearing as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump on November 19, 2019. (Credit: Jonathan Ernst, Reuters)

“A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by star impeachment witness Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (Ret.) against Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani, and two Trump White House staffers for supposed “witness intimidation” during Trump’s impeachment hearings.

Vindman filed his suit in February, just over a year after he had enjoyed fifteen minutes of infamy before Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and the House Intelligence Committee, as Democrats sought to impeach and remove Trump for allegedly pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate allegations of corruption against Joe Biden, his leading rival in the 2020 election.

(…) Vindman alerted a contact in the intelligence committee — whom he refused to name under oath — about a July 2019 phone call between Trump and Zelensky, triggering the investigation into Trump. Schiff would not allow Vindman to be questioned about the so-called “whistleblower” who first approached the House Intelligence Committee with his second-hand concerns about the call. Vindman did admit, however, that the Ukrainians felt no “pressure” to investigate Biden.

(…) U.S. District Court James Boasberg of the District of Columbia, a Barack Obama appointee, issued a 29-page ruling, The Hill reported, concluding that even if “Defendants leveled harsh, meanspirited, and at times misleading attacks” against Vindman, “political hackery alone does not violate [the law at issue].” White House staffers Dan Scavino and Julia Hahn, a former reporter for Breitbart News, were also named as defendants in the lawsuit.” (Read more: Breitbart, 11/8/2022)  (Archive)

November 9, 2022 - Archives discovers nine additional boxes of Biden documents from his attorney's Boston office

Patrick Moore (l, bottom) and his law office in Boston, Massachusetts. Moore was appointed as the First Assistant Attorney General by the newly elected Massachusetts Attorney General, Andrea Campbell, in December 2022. (Credit: MSN)

 Nine boxes of documents were taken from President Biden’s attorney Patrick Moore’s Boston office, but have yet to be reviewed, the National Archives disclosed in a response letter to Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, this week first obtained by Fox News Digital.

The Archives had not previously publicly disclosed the number of boxes taken from Boston. It had been reported that Moore had shipped boxes of documents from the Penn Biden Center to his Boston office before discovering the initial trove of classified documents at the Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

In response to questions by Johnson and Grassley in a Feb. 24 letter asking how and when the archives learned that records were transported to Boston, Acting Archivist of the United States Debra Steidel Wall responded the agency learned about it on Nov. 3, 2022.

“When NARA [National Archives and Records Administration] contacted President Biden’s personal counsel on November 3, 2022, to arrange to pick up boxes from the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., they informed NARA that Mr. Moore had moved other boxes from the Penn Biden Center to Mr. Moore’s law firm in Boston,” the letter states.

In addition, the archives notified the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General on Nov. 4 that the documents had been moved. The documents were then picked up on Nov. 9 and were secured in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston.

“NARA staff retrieved nine boxes from Mr. Moore’s Boston office,” Wall continued, which had not been previously known.

Despite having possession of the documents since November, the Archives has not yet reviewed the boxes’ content to determine whether additional classified materials are inside.

“NARA has not reviewed the contents of the boxes found at Mr. Moore’s Boston office,” Wall states in the letter dated Tuesday. (Read more: Fox News, 3/08/2023)  (Archive)

November 17, 2022 Clinton-linked dark money group that includes Media Matters, targets advertisers to stop Musk from restoring free speech protections

Clinton testifies to House Select Committee on Benghazi in October 2015. (Credit: public domain)

Jonathan Turley

“In the shift of the left against free speech principles, there is no figure more actively or openly pushing for censorship than Hillary Clinton. Now, reports indicate that Clinton has unleashed her allies in the corporate world to coerce Musk to restore censorship policies or face bankruptcy. The effort of the Clinton-linked “Accountable Tech” reveals the level of panic in Democratic circles that free speech could be restored on one social media platform. The group was open about how losing control over Twitter could result in a loss of control over social media generally. For Clinton, it is an “all-hands on deck” call for censorship. She previously called upon foreign governments to crackdown on the free speech of Americans on Twitter.

We have been discussing how Clinton and others have called on foreign countries to pass censorship laws to prevent Elon Musk from restoring free speech protections on Twitter. It seems that, after years of using censorship-by-surrogates in social media companies, Democratic leaders seem to have rediscovered good old-fashioned state censorship.

Accountable Tech led an effort to send a letter to top Twitter advertisers to force Musk to accept “non-negotiable” requirements for censorship.

General Motors was one of the first to pull its advertising funds to stop free speech restoration on the site.

Of course, the company had no problem with supporting Twitter when it was running one of the largest censorship systems in history — or supporting TikTok (which is Chinese-owned and has been denounced for state control and access to data). Twitter has been denounced for years for its bias against conservative and dissenting voices, including presumably many GM customers on the right. None of that was a concern for GM but the pledge to restore free speech to Twitter warrants a suspension.

The letter is open about the potential cascading effect if free speech is restored on one platform: “While the company is hardly a poster child for healthy social media, it has taken welcome steps in recent years to mitigate systemic risks, ratcheting up pressure on the likes of Facebook and YouTube to follow suit.”

The letter insists that free speech will only invite “disinformation, hate, and harassment” and that “[u]nder the guise of ‘free speech,’ [Musk’s] vision will silence and endanger marginalized communities, and tear at the fraying fabric of democracy.”

Among other things, the letter demands “algorithmic accountability,”  a notable inclusion in light of Democratic politicians demanding enlightened algorithms to protect citizens from their own bad choices or thoughts.

This is a copy of the letter posted in Turley’s article. The original letter was posted on Scribd and has since been removed.)

General Motors was one of the first to pull its advertising funds to stop free speech restoration on the site.

Of course, the company had no problem with supporting Twitter when it was running one of the largest censorship systems in history — or supporting TikTok (which is Chinese owned and has been denounced for state control and access to data). Twitter has been denounced for years for its bias against conservative and dissenting voices, including presumably many GM customers on the right. None of that was a concern for GM but the pledge to restore free speech to Twitter warrants a suspension.

The letter is open about the potential cascading effect if free speech is restored on one platform: “While the company is hardly a poster-child for healthy social media, it has taken welcome steps in recent years to mitigate systemic risks, ratcheting up pressure on the likes of Facebook and YouTube to follow suit.”

The letter insists that free speech will only invite “disinformation, hate, and harassment” and that “[u]nder the guise of ‘free speech,’ [Musk’s] vision will silence and endanger marginalized communities, and tear at the fraying fabric of democracy.”

Among other things, the letter demands “algorithmic accountability,”  a notable inclusion in light of Democratic politicians demanding enlightened algorithms to protect citizens from their own bad choices or thoughts.

In addition to Accountable Tech, twenty-five other groups signed the letter to demand the restoration of censorship policies, including Media Matters and the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. Accountable Tech has partnered in the past with Hillary Clinton’s Onward Together nonprofit group.

I have no objection to boycotts, which are an important form of free speech. However, this boycott action is directed at restoring censorship and preventing others from being able to post or to read opposing viewpoints.

If consistent with their past records, these companies will likely cave to these demands. While the public has clearly shown that they want more (not less) free speech, these executives are likely to yield to the pressure of Clinton and other powerful figures to coerce Musk into limiting the speech of others on his platform.

These campaigns only add support to Musk’s push for alternative revenue sources, including verification fees.  As I previously wrote, we can show that there is a market for free speech by supporting Twitter in trying to reduce the dependence on corporate sponsors. If Musk remains faithful to free speech, many customers are likely to join his platform and support his effort to reduce censorship on social media. (Read more: Jonathan Turley, 11/17/2022)  (Archive)

December 6, 2022 - Former FBI agent, Elvis Chan, reveals massive election interference in court testimony

Elvis Chan (Credit: public domain)

“A Big Tech lawsuit has uncovered one of the most disturbing revelations yet about social media companies’ collusion with law enforcement agencies to police speech on the Internet. A former FBI agent, Elvis Chan, revealed during the court hearings that the bureau held weekly meetings with major social media companies prior to the 2020 and 2022 elections.

On Wednesday, the court transcript of former FBI agent Elvis Chan’s testimony was released and corroborated earlier reports.

“Mr. Chan, or Agent Chan, who do you recall on the social media platform side participating in these — in these working group meetings that you have been testifying about from 2020 and 2022?”

“The companies that I remember attending the meetings are Facebook; Microsoft; Google; Twitter; Yahoo!, which have been known as Verizon Media at the time; Wikimedia Foundation and Reddit,” Agent Chan said.

Chan was then asked why the FBI was participating in these meetings.

“And why are you included in particular?”

“The reason that I attend these meetings is because the way the FBI works is FBI field offices are responsible for maintaining day-t0-day relationships with the companies that are headquartered in their area of responsibility, which I may occasionally abbreviate AOR,” Chan responded. “And all of the companies that have been listed, with the exception of Microsoft, are all headquartered in San Francisco’s territory.”

Chan also testified that he was in regular contact with Facebook’s Steven Siegel and Twitter’s Yoel Roth, as reported by Lee Fang.

Yoel Roth, formerly Twitter’s Head of Trust and Safety, was recently terminated by Elon Musk, as was Twitter’s General Counsel Jim Baker, who was formerly the FBI’s General Counsel.

Chan also related the U.S. government is in regular correspondence with major social media platforms regarding elections; namely, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (or CISA).

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, one of the attorneys general that filed the lawsuit, earlier disclosed an overview of FBI agent Elvis Chan’s testimony on ‘weekly meetings’ about censoring Internet posts ahead of the 2020 election.

“In our deposition of FBI agent Elvis Chan on Tuesday, we found that the FBI plays a big role in working with social media companies to censor speech – from weekly meetings with social media companies ahead of the 2020 election to asks for account takedowns,” Schmitt wrote in a Twitter thread.

“Chan, the FBI’s FITF, and senior CISA officials had meetings with social media companies in the lead-up to the 2020 election, in which Chan personally told the social media companies that there could potentially be a Russian ‘hack and leak’ operation shortly before the election,” he continued. “Those meetings were initially quarterly, then monthly, then weekly heading into the 2020 election.”

“Chan stated that the FBI regularly sent social media companies lists of URLs and social media accounts that should be taken down because they were disinformation from ‘malign foreign influence operations’,” Schmitt went on. “The FBI then inquired whether the platforms have taken down the content. On many occasions, the platforms took down the accounts flagged by the FBI.”

Chan testified because of the agent’s extensive knowledge of the FBI’s interaction with social media companies, the judge in the case stated.

“Chan had authority over cybersecurity issues for the FBI in the San Francisco, California region which includes the headquarters of major social-media platforms and played a critical role for the FBI in coordinating with social-media platforms related to censorship,” Judge Terry A. Doughty wrote in his court order.

“Even if Chan played no role in the Hunter Biden laptop communication issue, he may have knowledge of who did, and his deposition is nonetheless warranted,” the judge aded. “If Chan played no role in the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, then such information will be made clear in his deposition.” (Read more: Becker News, 12/07/2022)  (Archive)

December 6, 2022 - Elon Musk "exited" former FBI general counsel, James Baker, from Twitter

December 8, 2022 - Daniel Kimmage deposition reveals State Department was funding fact-checkers

Attorneys representing the Missouri and Louisiana AGs in their case against the government have uncovered that the State Department was funding fact checkers possibly in the US.

(…) The Gateway Pundit readers know that The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft is a co-Plaintiff, along with several doctors and a Louisiana news outlet, in Missouri and Louisiana lawsuit against the Biden Administration.  The AGs of Missouri and Louisiana are suing the Biden Administration (Missouri, et al, v. Biden, et al), the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the DOJ, Jen Psaki, Anthony Fauci, Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, and other federal agents and agencies for colluding with Big Tech to censor Americans all across the nation.

Daniel Kimmage (Credit: video screenshot)

(…) The Attorneys General recently deposed Daniel Kimmage, the Acting Coordinator for the Global Engagement Center at the Department of State.

The Gateway Pundit tonight can confirm that we’ve uncovered something shocking and potentially corrupt or even criminal that was revealed during his deposition.

Krimmage held the following role from February 22, 2021, through June 30, 2021:

…the Acting Coordinator for the Global Engagement Center at the Department of State. In this role, Mr. Kimmage leads [led] efforts to coordinate and synchronize U.S. government communications efforts designed to counter terrorist recruitment and state-sponsored propaganda and disinformation.

Based on Kimmage’s testimony we’ve uncovered information that the State Department was funding online fact-checkers.  Kimmage doesn’t state whether it was foreign or domestic fact-checkers that the State Department was funding.

In the deposition in the Missouri and Louisiana case against the government, Kimmage shared the following:

(Page 183 / Lines 1-4 & 17-25)

1     Q. Has the GEC ever supported
2     fact-checking organizations inside the United
3     States?
4      A. I don’t believe so.

17    Q. What fact-checkers do you work
18    with?
19    A. I believe the Pointer(sp) Institute is
20    the only one I recall. I don’t recall the —
21    the specific organizations.
22    Q. Where is that? Where is that
23    located?
24    A. I don’t recall.
25    Q. Is that a foreign or domestic

(Page 184 / Lines 1-4 & 12-23 )

1      fact-checking organization?
2      A. I don’t — I don’t recall. I don’t
3      recall anything beyond the name.
12    Q. Do you have any understanding of
13    how GEC works with fact-checking organizations,
14    in general?
15    A. I believe it would be identifying
16    an organization that works in a location where a
17    foreign propaganda disinformation actor, like
18    Russia or China, would be active and supporting
19    them in some fashion.
20    Q. What kind of fashion?
21    A. Support could range from a grant or
22    a financial support to information sharing or
23    training in tools and techniques.

Kimmage must have tried to hide who that entity was that he was talking about.

The Gateway Pundit found that Poynter Institute operates Politifact one of the most notorious fact-checkers in the business.  The Poynter Institute also brags about teaching classes on ethics.  This and all the while the Institute according to Kimmage was being given grants by the US State Department.

The Poynter Institute does mention that it is supported by government agencies:

We rely on support from several funding sources who value the essential role of the free press in our society, including corporate partners, philanthropic foundations, government agencies and individual donors.

(Read more: The Gateway Pundit, 12/8/2022)  (Archive)

December 14, 2022 - Epstein Island: Newly unsealed evidence of abuse

We have newly unsealed documents – including the depositions of Ghislaine Maxwell and one of her victims – revealing new details on the extent of the abuse and victimization that took place by Jeffrey Epstein. Those filings come from Giuffre v. Maxwell, a civil case filed against Maxwell in 2015 in the New York Southern District.

Some of the broader allegations have already been made public. Sarah Ransome, who accused Epstein and Maxwell of abuse that took place during her early 20s, settled a civil lawsuit against them in 2018. Ransome has publicly described some of the abuse. And there have been reports on what transpired at Little St. James, often referred to as Epstein Island.

Unsealed photographs of Ghislaine Maxwell at Epstein Island. (Credit: public domain)

Let’s get to the new details, starting with the testimony of Ransome, available here. She actually lived one of Epstein’s apartments in 2006 with a few other girls. During that time, she worked for what she described as an “agency” which arranged paid dinners with wealthy clients: “I was paid to spend dinner with a gentleman.” Whatever happened after dinner with the client was done on her “own accord” and “after that time period had finished.”

Ransome was introduced to Epstein by a female associate of his (her name is still redacted), who described Epstein as a wealthy “philanthropist” who “really cares about people” and “really wants to help them.” She was open to meeting Epstein because she was struggling financially. Soon after meeting Epstein, Ransome was invited to travel on Epstein’s plane to Epstein Island. She was told it “was going to be a girls’ week” and they would have “so much fun”:

Q. How did the flight meeting become arranged, if you know?

A. So it was pretty a last-minute thing. phoned me up and said that Jeffrey Epstein would very much like to have me go to his island. It was going to be so much fun, it was going to be a girls’ week, there were lots of other girls going, we were going to have so much fun, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

What happened on the flight – her first flight with Epstein – must have been shocking to Ransome. She described what happened after they took off:

“The rest of the passengers in the — I think it’s towards the front of the plane where all the seats are — we all — all the guests were — fell asleep. I pretended to be asleep.

Jeffrey then went – Jeffrey went to his — was in his bed on the plane, having open sex with for everyone to see, on display.”

Ransome would eventually give massages to Epstein at the Island. She had been told that Epstein “loves women, loves getting massages” and that this “was a nice way to make extra cash.” At first, the massages were relatively normal. Then they escalated to the type of “massage” Epstein is now notorious for – much of which was done without Ransome’s consent.

She described her experiences at Epstein’s Island as being constantly surrounded by “beautiful young people” and that there “were always girls” there to visit “Jeffrey and Ghislaine.” Ransome also gave a description of the Island as having multiple buildings – a main house and then various buildings around the Island for Epstein and his guests:

“like little shelter things where him and his guests used to have sex with the girls, like beds set up for instant sexual entertainment.”

There was a “constant influx of girls” at this Island. It was a type of brothel. According to Ransome:

“It’s like, I’m sure if you go into a hooker’s brothel and see how they run their business, I mean, it’s just general conversation about who’s going to have sex with who and, you know — what do you talk about when all do you is have sex every day on rotation? I mean, what is there to talk about?”

She testified that all those girls “appeared to be teenagers.” They “looked young.” One girl in particular “looked well under 18.” This girl told Ransome that “they abused her on the island.” Another girl ran out of Epstein’s room crying and saying she was “forced to have sex with Jeffrey Epstein.” (Read more: Techno Fog/The Reactionary, 12/14/2022)  (Archive)

December 16, 2022 - Twitter Files reveal the influence of Russiagate disinformation

(…) The recently disclosed Twitter Files — a cache of internal communications from the social media giant — offer new evidence of one of the Russiagate disinformation campaign’s core functions: protecting the rule of domestic elites, particularly in the Democratic Party.

In two consecutive presidential elections, the Russian boogeyman has been invoked to stigmatize and silence reporting on the Democratic candidate. It began in 2016 when journalists who reported on the stolen DNC emails’ revelations about Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street speeches or the DNC’s bias against Bernie Sanders were blamed for Trump’s victory and deemed to be unwitting Kremlin dupes promoting “disinformation” – in reality, factual material that embarrassed the pre-ordained winner.

Four years later, that same playbook was deployed for Clinton’s successor at the top of Democratic ticket, Joe Biden. In the weeks before the November 2020 election, Twitter and Facebook censored the New York Post’s reporting about the contents Hunter Biden’s laptop on the grounds that the computer material could be “Russian disinformation.” The Post’s stories detailed how Hunter Biden traded on his family name to secure lucrative business abroad, and raised questions about Joe Biden’s denials of any involvement.

The US media responded to the suppression of the laptop story with indifference or even approval. In one notable case, Glenn Greenwald resigned from the outlet that he co-founded, The Intercept, after its editors attempted to censor his coverage of the laptop controversy. Even stories that had long been public — such as the unqualified Hunter receiving an $80,000-per-month Burisma board seat just months after his father’s administration helped overthrow Ukraine’s government – were effectively off-limits.

There was never a shred of evidence that Russia was behind the laptop story, but that was of no consequence. Dutiful media editors, reporters, and pundits took their cues from a group of more than 50 former intelligence officials, who issued a statement declaring that the Hunter Biden laptop story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

These intelligence veterans’ claim was in fact a classic Russiagate disinformation operation, as the Twitter files newly underscore.

The files, obtained by journalist Matt Taibbi, confirm that Twitter executives suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story based on the suspicion that Russia was behind it, despite their awareness that they had no evidence for that belief.

Asked to explain the rationale, Twitter’s then-Global Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth told colleagues that the “policy basis is hacked materials,” even though, he added, “the facts remain unclear.” Roth justified the fact-free censorship by invoking what he called “the SEVERE risks here and lessons of 2016.” By “lessons of 2016”, Roth was referring to the similarly evidence-free claims that Russia was behind the release of stolen DNC emails. By “SEVERE risks,” one plausible interpretation is that Roth is referring to the risk that dissemination of factual material could again, as in 2016, hurt the Democratic candidate, not to mention the career prospects of those who allow that to happen.

Joining Roth in agreement was Jim Baker, Twitter’s deputy general counsel, who advised that “it is reasonable for us to assume that they may have been [hacked] and that caution is warranted.” (emphasis added) Baker’s mere presence at Twitter, and willingness to “assume” a falsehood that could justify censorship, reveals another lesson of 2016: from media outlets to social media giants, US intelligence officials have been granted unprecedented influence over the flow of public information – including stories in which they have blatant conflicts of interest. (Read more: Aaron Maté/Substack, 12/16/2022)  (Archive)

December 20, 2022 - How the FBI copied parts of the Steele dossier directly into their Carter Page FISA warrants

Crossfire Hurricane Team (Credit: Conservative Treehouse)

Paul Sperry

“The FBI relied more extensively on Christopher Steele’s debunked dossier in their Russiagate investigation than has been revealed, inserting key parts from it into their applications for warrants to spy on the 2016 Trump campaign.

Agents did this without telling the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the precise wording was plucked directly from a political rumor sheet paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign or providing judges with any independent corroboration of the explosive allegations.

But the notion that mere “snippets” of the reporting by paid Clinton subcontractor Christopher Steele showed up in FISA applications, as CNN has described it, no longer holds up to scrutiny.

A close examination of all four of the FISA warrants reveals that the FBI lifted dozens of key phrases from the dossier – as well as practically some entire sentences – and pasted them verbatim into their sworn affidavits. It did so repeatedly without citing its sources or using typical hedging language such as “allegedly” or “purportedly” to indicate that the claims were unverified. 

As a result, the FBI lent its voice of authority to many of the unsourced – and now debunked – accusations in the dossier. 

For example, it avowed under oath in all four warrant applications that “the FBI has learned” that onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had secretly met with sanctioned Kremlin officials in Moscow. But those allegations came from Steele’s D.C.-based collector Igor Danchenko, who admitted to the FBI in a January 2017 interview his input was just “hearsay” gathered from “conversation with friends over beer.”

It is not clear whether the bureau decided to pay Steele in connection with the dossier so that it could represent the material as originating from one of its own confidential sources. At one point it reportedly offered him $1 million if he could verify key claims (he could not).

Meanwhile, the FBI repeatedly portrayed improbable third-hand rumors as sound “intelligence,” despite taking them directly from paid political opposition research operatives. Suggesting independent verification, the bureau repeatedly assured the FISA court it “assesses” the truth of damning claims.  

In some cases, the FBI mixed partial information from one dossier report with partial information from another report to draw broader conclusions. It then used these as a foundation to claim evidence of a grand election “conspiracy” between the Trump campaign and Russia, with Page acting as an “intermediary.” Such a conspiracy was what counterintelligence agents needed to convince the FISA court that their main target Page was a Kremlin agent who posed a national security threat, and that deploying the government’s most intrusive investigative method – electronic surveillance – was necessary to investigate him.

In short, the FBI fabricated conclusions from fabrications and turned them into sworn representations before the powerful Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. 

Veteran FBI investigators who have worked counterintelligence cases and sworn out wiretap warrants say the agents who ran the Russiagate investigation, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane, violated the fundamental principle requiring them to independently verify evidence they present to the court.
Cl
“Their actions – lying and misrepresentations on warrants and affidavits – are antithetical to every instruction at FBI training at Quantico and in the field,” said 27-year FBI veteran Michael Biasello. “Any FBI Academy trainee and agent in the field is aware that search warrants, affidavits and any accompanying documents and information contained therein requiring federal judicial approval is to be vetted and verified to create a pristine document. Their accuracy is vital.” 

The FBI declined comment.

The bureau’s reliance on the dossier – a series of 17 reports compiled by Steele for Fusion GPS, the Washington-based opposition research firm employed the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee – has been brought into sharp relief by the work of Special Counsel John Durham.

His team investigated for possible criminal misconduct the Russiagate probe that hobbled the Trump presidency. It zeroed in on the FBI’s handling of the dossier both before and after the agency began using it to gain FISA court approval to wiretap Page in 2016 and 2017. Investigators questioned several FBI witnesses about their interactions with Steele and Danchenko, some of whom Durham said were not forthcoming about their involvement and obtained related documents. Danchenko, who provided an estimated 80% of the dossier’s content, was indicted last year for lying about the sources of his information, though he was acquitted in October by a D.C.-area jury.

Like CNN, the New York Times has tried to minimize the agency’s reliance on the dossier. In a recent article on Durham’s inquiry, the Times maintained that the FBI only used “some” claims from the dossier in applying for court permission to wiretap Page.

In fact, the FBI used several claims – and those claims happened to constitute the most critical “evidence” in the wiretap applications. Even former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe has admitted that if not for the Steele dossier, no surveillance warrant would have been sought for Page.

All told, the FBI used four dossier reports – Report 80, Report 94, Report 95 and Report 102 – in all four of its FISA wiretap warrants targeting Page in 2016 and 2017. And three of the reports were based on a fictitious source. (Read more: RealClearWire, 12/20/2022)  (Archive)