Featured Timeline Entries
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)

December 20, 2022 -Biden aides find another batch of classified documents at separate location

“Aides to President Joe Biden have discovered at least one additional batch of classified documents in a location separate from the Washington office he used after leaving the Obama administration, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Since November, after the discovery of documents with classified markings in his former office, Biden aides have been searching for any additional classified materials that might be in other locations he used, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details about the ongoing inquiry.

Joe Biden (Credit: Nathan Howard/Getty)

The White House did not reply to a request for comment. The Justice Department had no comment.

The initial discovery of classified documents in an office used by Biden after his vice presidency was first reported on Monday by CBS News.

The classification level, number and precise location of the additional documents was not immediately clear. It also was not immediately clear when the additional documents were discovered and if the search for any other classified materials Biden may have from the Obama administration is complete.

Biden aides have been sifting through documents stored at locations beyond his former Washington office to determine if there are any other classified documents that need to be turned over to the National Archives and reviewed by the Justice Department, the person familiar with the matter said.” (Read more: NBC News, 1/11/2023)  (Archive)

“The initial statement issued by White House attorney Richard Sauber on Monday to address the CBS News report on classified documents being discovered at the Penn Biden Center on November 2, 2022, failed to disclose that additional classified documents were found at Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home on December 20 by Biden’s personal attorneys. It was not until Thursday morning that Sauber announced that a second set of classified documents were found in Biden’s garage and was confirmed by Biden in a contentious colloquy with Fox News reporter Peter Doocy.”

(Read more: The Gateway Pundit, 1/12/2023) (Archive)

Merrick Garland Appoints Robert Hur as Special Counsel to Investigate Joe Biden’s Handling of Classified Documents 1/12/2023

December 26, 2022 - Former FBI agent offers perspective on the DOJ/FBI efforts to derail Nunes investigation into Russiagate hoaxes

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, along with Rep. Peter King and Rep. Ron DeSantis, speaks on Capitol Hill, October 24, 2017. (Credit: Susan Walsh/AP)

“My post yesterday regarding the DoJ/FBI investigation of two of Devin Nunes’ top lawyers sparked a response from a former FBI agent—as sometimes happens here. You’ll recall that the investigation in question was a full criminal investigation that featured the use of grand jury subpoenas to obtain personal information regarding the two staffers (including Kash Patel) who were involved in Nunes’ investigation of Russia Hoax abuses—especially the fraudulent FISA applications that were submitted against Carter Page. Because of various procedural irregularities it’s apparent—failure to notify Nunes—there seems little doubt that the purpose of the investigations was to obtain personal information that could be used to pressure Nunes into backing off from his investigation. In fact, DAG Rod Rosenstein and Chris Wray had threatened to launch exactly such investigations in a meeting with Nunes and Kash Patel—unless Nunes backed off.

Needless to say, investigations launched for such a purpose are totally lacking in predication—they lack a legitimate government legal purpose, since conducting legislative oversight investigations is not a violation of federal law (!). I harp on this matter of predication because, to me—and I think objectively, the abuse of the investigative/prosecutorial process for political purposes is perhaps the ultimate and most serious form of corruption. It undermines the justice system and the very concept of rule of law rather than rule of men—the basis of our constitutional order. As I noted at that time, it is clear that such considerations play no part at all in the decisions of men like Rosenstein and Wray—and far too many more. These are real and serious violations of the law, which go unpunished.

Here is the email (slightly edited to preserve anonymity) that I received last night. Readers will readily imagine that the sentiments expressed are widely held among former and active FBI personnel. Bear in mind that, while these abuses are receiving widespread publicity, most FBI agents are not involved and are ashamed to be associated with the activities that are being exposed.

     Having been required to read and comprehend the Domestic Investigative Operations Guide (“DIOG”) when it came out and being a Bureau legal advisor which required that I speak DIOG fluently, I think we are collectively making a mistake to think that anyone at the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Bureau cares one whit about predication.  No DOJ or Bureau employee has ever punished for violating the DIOG or federal criminal statutes.  As a result, when the DOJ and Bureau can claim the mantle of “national security” and effectively and easily thwart any attempts at Congressional oversight, what does it matter if the investigation of Nunes and his staffers was properly predicated?  I am asking rhetorically.  I understand that the DOJ and Bureau violated the DIOG/law/Constitutional requirements and should be held accountable.  But when no one can hold the DOJ or Bureau to account for such violations, why even bother with the charade of seeking predication?  I read the Electronic Communication (“EC”; after it was publicly released) that opened the investigation into general Flynn.  It was a complete joke.  All it alleged was that Flynn met with some Russians and did some overseas travel.   There was nothing within the four corners of that document that would have been the proper basis of any predication of the investigation (as a side note, had any agent brought such a piece of garbage to me to review as a legal advisor, I would have laughed them out of my office and then had a serious discussion with said agent’s supervisor about that agent’s fitness for duty, but I digress).  Yet the investigation proceeded, Flynn was indicted, arrested and prosecuted with no proper predication.  What is/was to stop the DOJ and Bureau from just opening an investigation on Nunes or anyone else for that matter and ignoring the need to abide by “the rules”?  I respectfully submit, not a damn thing.

Every crime victim I ever interviewed all shared the same sentiment:  “I didn’t think it (crime) could happen to me.”  The point is that it appears that many of the machinations by the DOJ and Bureau are completely lawless with no basis in legally comprehensible evidence of criminal violations. I think the sooner we all collectively realize “That it can happen here/to us” the better we will be able to address this issue.  Please don’t take this as a criticism of you and your work, it’s just an observation made by a retired agent.

All of which brings me to a serious question:  What concrete things can we do to:  A) Address the current issues facing our Republic (DOJ/Bureau overreach, profligate spending, creeping government sponsored surveillance state, potential nuclear war, and…?)  and B)How do we fix our society at a very basic level to create wise citizens who can keep our Republic in good order?  I am pretty much done reading the latest “outrage” in the conservative press.  I understand that things are a mess.  My overarching question to complainers/commentators/politicians is: “What are you going to do about it?”  I have steadily volunteered to assist the Republican party over the last two years to little or no avail.  I am redirecting my efforts and concentrating on assisting local legislators address local issues where I may have some small amount of control.

Anyway, deep thoughts on a rainy, cold afternoon.  I am going to throw another log on the fire.  Thanks for listening to my rant.  I fervently wish that you and yours have a peaceful, prosperous and boring New Year!

My response:

I’m totally on board with you. I would simply add–and I’m not making excuses for the Bureau–that too few people understand how much of this is driven by DoJ. Especially given that so many of the HQ legal people are joined at the hip with DoJ, either mentally from prior education or because they have prior work experience there. I refuse to believe that DoJ wasn’t in on the Twitter (and other) censorship. The Bureau gets the headlines, the talk of a new Church Commission, but DoJ is arguably the biggest threat to the nation.

And the response to my response:

As to the DoJ, there is absolutely no way any of this “stuff” happened without their full knowledge and support.

The long and the short of it is that the country has been hijacked by a ruling class that is working for its own benefit. (Read more: Mark Wauck/Substack, 12/29/2022)(Archive) (Original article: The Epoch Times, 12/27/2202)  (Archive)

December 28, 2022 - Twitter Files: The DHS-backed censorship consortium censored millions of social media posts on elections, Covid-19 and Biden laptop

December 31, 2022 - Whitney Webb exposes the deep corruption and cover up at the heart of the western power structure

Journalist Whitney Webb sits down with Redacted’s Clayton Morris for a dense conversation about her bombshell new book on Jeffrey Epstein’s deep connections to the world’s biggest power players.

 

January 3, 2023 - Twitter Files: Twitter and the "FBI Belly Button" - FBI's Elvis Chan: “We can give you everything we’re seeing from the FBI and USIC agencies”

January 3, 2023 - Twitter Files: Former House Intel Committee chief Adam Schiff asks Twitter to ban journalist Paul Sperry

 

Paul Sperry responds 1/04/2023:

January 4, 2023 - Twitter Files: Twitter is pressured by Intel Community (including Senate Intel, Mark Warner)

“Matt Taibbi has a new substack out on the Twitter Files. This one concentrates on how Twitter found itself under political pressure from the Deep State to, in essence, lend support to the Russia Hoax. This, as usual, was an evidence free operation. Twitter looked but couldn’t find evidence of Russian “meddling”. Twitter execs said so to one another, but buckled to Deep State pressure. Overall, what we’re seeing from the Twitter File revelations is that the anti-Trump campaign was the biggest gaslighting of the public population ever witnessed since lower tech operations by the likes Stalin, Mao, and Hitler. It was all done with the appearance of an open society, but nothing could have been further from the truth. And it happened under a Republican administration. This will all be red meat for Sundance, as you’ll see the central role of Mark Warner and the Senate Intel Committee. Nevertheless, you can be sure that political masters higher up the food chain were directing all of this.

What I’ve done here is simply pasted in the text of Taibbi’s tweets—sans documentation, which you can find at the link.

1.THREAD: The Twitter Files

How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In

2.In August 2017, when Facebook decided to suspend 300 accounts with “suspected Russian origin,” Twitter wasn’t worried. Its leaders were sure they didn’t have a Russia problem.

3.“We did not see a big correlation.”

“No larger patterns.”

“FB may take action on hundreds of accounts, and we may take action on ~25.”

4.“KEEP THE FOCUS ON FB”: Twitter was so sure they had no Russia problem, execs agreed the best PR strategy was to say nothing on record, and quietly hurl reporters at Facebook:

5.“Twitter is not the focus of inquiry into Russian election meddling right now – the spotlight is on FB,” wrote Public Policy VP Colin Crowell:

6.In September, 2017, after a cursory review, Twitter informed the Senate it suspended 22 possible Russian accounts, and 179 others with “possible links” to those accounts, amid a larger set of roughly 2700 suspects manually examined.

Note the “possible”. That suggests that Twitter believed it best to offer up some meager results, whether there was real evidence or not.

7.Receiving these meager results, a furious Senator Mark Warner of Virginia – ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee – held an immediate press conference to denounce Twitter’s report as “frankly inadequate on every level.”

8.“#Irony,” mused Crowell the day after Warner’s presser, after receiving an e-circular from Warner’s re-election campaign, asking for “$5 or whatever you can spare.”

“LOL,” replied General Counsel Sean Edgett.

9.“KEEP PRODUCING MATERIAL” After meeting with congressional leaders, Crowell wrote: “Warner has political incentive to keep this issue at top of the news, maintain pressure on us and rest of industry to keep producing material for them.”

So, Twitter execs weren’t stupid. They knew exactly what this was about—politics. Evidence free political gaslighting, but of the entire country.

10.“TAKING THEIR CUES FROM HILLARY CLINTON” Crowell added Dems were taking cues from Hillary Clinton, who that week said: “It’s time for Twitter to stop dragging its heels and live up to the fact that its platform is being used as a tool for cyber-warfare.”

11. In growing anxiety over its PR problems, Twitter formed a “Russia Task Force” to proactively self-investigate.

So joining the gaslighting party had nothing to do with evidence—it was to handle a “PR problem”, which was really a problem with the political masters who regulated, or might regulate, their platform.

12.The “Russia Task Force” started mainly with data shared from counterparts at Facebook, centered around accounts supposedly tied to Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA). But the search for Russian perfidy was a dud:

Despite their best gaslighting intentions, there just wasn’t anything that could be plausibly called evidence.

13. OCT 13 2017: “No evidence of a coordinated approach, all of the accounts found seem to be lone-wolf type activity (different timing, spend, targeting, <$10k in ad spend).”

14.OCT 18 2017: “First round of RU investigation… 15 high risk accounts, 3 of which have connections with Russia, although 2 are RT.”

What to do? Cast the net more widely! But—still no fish in the net.

15.OCT 20 2017: “Built new version of the model that is lower precision but higher recall which allows to catch more items. We aren’t seeing substantially more suspicious accounts. We expect to find ~20 with a small amount of spend.”

16.OCT 23 2017: “Finished with investigation… 2500 full manual account reviews, we think this is exhaustive… 32 suspicious accounts and only 17 of those are connected with Russia, only 2 of those have significant spend one of which is Russia Today…remaining <$10k in spend.”

Basically, a total bust. But that was good enough to generate MSM headlines to gaslight the populace and spread Russia hysteria.

17.Twitter’s search finding “only 2” significant accounts, “one of which is Russia Today,” was based on the same data that later inspired panic headlines like “Russian Influence Reached 126 Million Through Facebook Alone”:

18.The failure of the “Russia task force” to produce “material” worsened the company’s PR crisis.

That sure has a Stalinesque show trial ring to it, doesn’t it? If you can’t prove guilt, you may be the guilty party! You may be a “wrecker”, a saboteur, … a, a, AGENT OF PUTIN!

19.In the weeks after Warner’s presser, a torrent of stories sourced to the Intel Committee poured into the news, an example being Politico’s October 13, “Twitter deleted data potentially crucial to Russia probes.”

20.“Were Twitter a contractor for the FSB… they could not have built a more effective disinformation platform,” Johns Hopkins Professor (and Intel Committee “expert”) Thomas Rid told Politico.

21.As congress threatened costly legislation, and Twitter [again] was subject to more bad press fueled by the committees, the company changed its tune about the smallness of its Russia problem.

Fake confession time.

22.“Hi guys.. Just passing along for awareness the writeup here from the WashPost today on potential legislation (or new FEC regulations) that may affect our political advertising,” wrote Crowell.

23. In Washington weeks after the first briefing, Twitter leaders were told by Senate staff that “Sen Warner feels like tech industry was in denial for months.” Added an Intel staffer: “Big interest in Politico article about deleted accounts.”

24.Twitter “pledged to work with them on their desire to legislate”:

25.“Knowing that our ads policy and product changes are an effort to anticipate congressional oversight, I wanted to share some relevant highlights of the legislation Senators Warner, Klobuchar and McCain will be introducing,” wrote Policy Director Carlos Monje soon after.

It’s bipartisan.

26.“THE COMMITTEES APPEAR TO HAVE LEAKED” Even as Twitter prepared to change its ads policy and remove RT and Sputnik to placate Washington, congress turned the heat up more, apparently leaking the larger, base list of 2700 accounts.

27.Reporters from all over started to call Twitter about Russia links. Buzzfeed, working with the University of Sheffield, claimed to find a “new network” on Twitter that had “close connections to… Russian-linked bot accounts.”

28.“IT WILL ONLY EMBOLDEN THEM.” Twitter internally did not want to endorse the Buzzfeed/Sheffield findings:

29. “SENATE INTEL COMMITTEE IS ASKING… POSSIBLE TO WHIP SOMETHING TOGETHER?” Still, when the Buzzfeed piece came out, the Senate asked for “a write up of what happened.” Twitter was soon apologizing for the same accounts they’d initially told the Senate were not a problem.

30.“REPORTERS NOW KNOW THIS IS A MODEL THAT WORKS”

This cycle – threatened legislation, wedded to scare headlines pushed by congressional/intel sources, followed by Twitter caving to moderation asks – would later be formalized in partnerships with federal law enforcement.

The desired result has been achieved—Twitter is transformed into the PR gaslighting arm of the Intel Committee, censoring information that might lead the public to become suspicious of what its masters were up to.

31.Twitter soon settled on its future posture.

In public, it removed content “at our sole discretion.”

Privately, they would “off-board” anything “identified by the U.S.. intelligence community as a state-sponsored entity conducting cyber-operations.”

32.Twitter let the “USIC” into its moderation process. It would not leave.

Wrote Crowell, in an email to the company’s leaders:

“We will not be reverting to the status quo.”

(Meaning In History/Substack, 1/4/2023)  (Archive) (Taibbi thread)

January 6, 2023 - Louisiana AG lawsuit reveals Biden regime pressured Facebook to censor Tucker Carlson and targeting of Robert Kennedy, Jr.

(…) On Friday, January 6, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry released communications between Joe Biden’s Director of Digital Strategy, Joe Flaherty, pressuring Facebook to censor Tucker Carlson of FOX News.

Joe Flaherty demands to know what “reduction” of the information looks like on Facebook. The White House is very upset that the FOX News host is questioning the dangerous experimental vaccine.

Jeff Landry also released a Facebook document telling the White House how to censor Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense Fund. (Read more: The Gateway Pundit, 1/7/2023) (Archive)

More on Rob Flaherty,  White House Director of Digital Strategy:

(…) This guy is middle management incarnate. Flaherty’s cartoonishly disrespectful language as he barks orders at various tech employees — who without fail respond with a “Thanks Rob” — has made me laugh aloud several times. I wanted to learn more about this perfect caricature of modern-day fascism. A bit about his background…

Rob Flaherty (Credit: Ithaca College News)

Flaherty got into politics as an undergraduate at Ithaca College. His social media aptitude quickly accelerated his career, landing him a position on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign just two years after graduating.

Screenshot of Flaherty post on Medium.

His thoughts on Hillary from an old blog post:

“Hillary Clinton went right in. That’s what she does. She’s tough as shit. It’s that toughness that, even in my worst moments in the last few months, has been genuinely inspiring to me. When she’s up against the wall, she grinds it out.”

I’m sure Mark Middleton can attest to that inspiring toughness.

Shortly thereafter, Flaherty became the “Digital Director” for Beto O’Rourke’s 2020 presidential campaign, engineering totally-not-authoritarian fundraising schemes like this one:

Apparently a huge success (note the timestamps compared to Beto’s):

Flaherty’s accolades do not end there. The social media savant was even behind the famous “We did it Joe!” promotional video, which announced Biden’s presidential victory for those who’d missed it. From Ithaca College News:

“One key moment in the campaign for Flaherty was the announcement of Biden’s running mate, then Senator Kamala Harris… had an extensive rollout plan, including a text message announcement, a video of Harris receiving the call from Biden.”

(Read more: Zero Hedge, 1/8/2023)  (Archive)

January 9, 2023 - Twitter Files: Pfizer board member used same Twitter manager as the WH to suppress debate on Covid vaccines

Former FDA Commissioner and present Pfizer board member, Dr. Scott Gottlieb. (Credit: Twitter)

On August 27, 2021, Dr. Scott Gottlieb – a Pfizer director with over 550,000 Twitter followers – saw a tweet he didn’t like, a tweet that might hurt sales of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccines.

The tweet explained correctly that natural immunity after Covid infection was superior to vaccine protection. It called on the White House to “follow the science” and exempt people with natural immunity from upcoming vaccine mandates.

It came not from an “anti-vaxxer” like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but from Dr. Brett Giroir, a physician who had briefly followed Gottlieb as the head of the Food & Drug Administration. Further, the tweet actually encouraged people who did not have natural immunity to “Get vaccinated!”

No matter.

Todd OBoyle, Sr. Manager, Twitter Public Policy (Credit: LinkedIn)

By suggesting some people might not need Covid vaccinations, the tweet could raise questions about the shots. Besides being former FDA commissioner, a CNBC contributor, and a prominent voice on Covid public policy, Gottlieb was a senior board member at Pfizer, which depended on mRNA jabs for almost half its $81 billion in sales in 2021. Pfizer paid Gottlieb $365,000 for his work that year.

Gottlieb stepped in, emailing Todd O’Boyle, a top lobbyist in Twitter’s Washington office who was also Twitter’s point of contact with the White House.

The post was “corrosive,” Gottlieb wrote. He worried it would “end up going viral and driving news coverage.” (Read more: Alex Berenson/Substack, 1/9/2023) (Archive)

January 12, 2023 - Twitter Files: The Fake Tale of Russian Bots - Twitter officials were aghast, finding no evidence of Russian influence

January 13, 2023 - Court filing: The FBI admits Seth Rich was directly involved in the DNC "hack"

 

Vox.com used the above graphic captured from a Fox News report to use in a published piece titled “The Bonkers Seth Rich Conspiracy Theory, Explained” on May 24, 2017. Now we know it’s no longer a conspiracy theory. (Credit: Fox News)

(Read more: Court Listener PDF (21 pages) , 1/13/2023)  (Archive)

Attorney Ty Clevenger explains further:

January 13, 2023 - Recently questioned Biden assistant Kathy Chung, appears in Biden laptop report 31 times, suggesting multiple felonies

From Marco Polo Biden laptop report:

January 13, 2023 - Twitter Files: More Adam Schiff ban requests and "Deamplification"

January 14, 2023 - Lawsuit: 6 Shocking Revelations of Government Censorship

(Credit: Getty Images/Forbes)

1. CISA considers your thoughts “Cognitive Infrastructure”

One of the most stunning things we’ve learned from this lawsuit is that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency now considers your thoughts and what you post online, a part of the United States Government’s “critical infrastructure,” thereby giving them the authority to regulate them. I don’t think anyone asked everyday Americans if they’d want the government regulating what goes on inside their brains, but alas, here we are.

2. Rob Flaherty coerced Facebook to ban and censor the vaccine injured, despite acknowledging their posts were true and didn’t break the Terms of Service

Rob Flaherty (Credit: public domain)

Rob Flaherty is the White House Director of Digital Strategy and a senior advisor to President Joe Biden. The government initially attempted to hide his involvement in censorship, but other discovery exposed his name, and the judge granted written interrogatory and discovery to the Plaintiffs in this case. As we will see in the examples below, Flaherty often acts as a ”boss” or manager to social media executives, cursing at them and treating them with disdain when they don’t follow his directives to censor the speech of Americans.

In an email response to Flaherty, Facebook beamed about removing post visibility and censoring the vaccine injured, stating:

3. Flaherty wanted Facebook to take more action in censoring the encrypted chat program “WhatsApp”

Rob Flaherty spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get Facebook to more stringently censor WhatsApp, despite Facebook telling him they had no way to read the messages its users were sending one another. Facebook added multiple layers of censorship to the app, deboosting posts that were forwarded often and pinning what it called “authoritative” messages about COVID and vaccines to the application.

4. Flaherty wanted to know what Facebook was doing to censor vaccine claims that were “dubious” but not false

Rob Flaherty consistently demanded information about what Facebook was doing to censor content that was not false but that they considered “dubious.” He demanded internal data from the organization to confirm their efforts to censor Americans were working.

5. Joe Biden was inadvertently swept up in the censorship algorithm the White House forced Instagram to implement

In what can only be considered a stroke of serendipity, Joe Biden’s account on Instagram was inadvertently demoted and shadowbanned due to the frequency with which is was posting content about COVID-19 vaccines. Instagram, at the behest of an abusive Rob Flaherty, created an algorithm to demote accounts that were sharing an inordinate amount of vaccine-related content. Flaherty realized that the POTUS account wasn’t picking up followers and emailed execs at the company to let them know. They responded, stating that they couldn’t get into details, but the account had been fixed. After a profanity-laced email sent back from Flaherty, the execs were forced to admit that the very censorship algorithm they created to censor everyday Americans swept up the President as well. Needless to say, the White House didn’t much like being censored.

6. The office of First Lady Jill Biden was also involved in censoring Americans on Twitter

The First Lady also got into censorship action, begging Twitter to remove an edited video of Jill Biden that was clearly a parody. Twitter fought back against the demand but ultimately removed the content after Flaherty became involved and was copied on communications. We wouldn’t have known that censorship extended to the sitting First Lady without the expedited discovery order covering Rob Flaherty.

(Much more including docs: UndercoverDC/TracyBeanz, 1/14/2023)  (Archive)