Featured Timeline Entries
April 27, 2023 - DOJ IG Horowitz testifies there were 3.4 million backdoor FISA searches on American citizens in 2021 with a 30% error rate
Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz could not answer how many people in the federal government can use the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on Americans through backdoor searches when Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz asked him at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Thursday.
FISA Section 702 enables intelligence agencies to carry out targeted surveillance of foreigners outside the U.S., but they have improperly used it on Americans. There were 3.4 million backdoor searches in 2021, according to an Office of the Director of National Intelligence 2022 Transparency report.
There was around a 30% error rate in these queries, Horowitz said in his testimony.
“How many people can perform these backdoor queries?” Gaetz asked.
“I’m gonna defer to board members ’cause you have the review ongoing,” Horowitz responded, referring to Sharon Bradford Franklin, Chair of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. (Read more: The Daily Caller, 4/27/2023) (Archive)
April 28, 2023 - After Hunter Biden divested from Chinese firm BHR Partners, his top attorney, Kevin Morris, obtains control of a ten percent stake
Kevin Morris, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, controls an entity with a ten percent stake in BHR Partners, a Chinese state-backed investment fund founded just days after Hunter and President Joe Biden visited China in 2013, a source confirmed Friday to Breitbart News.
After pressure increased on Hunter Biden to divest from BHR Partners due to a conflict of interest upon Joe Biden assuming the White House, Hunter Biden’s lawyer told the New York Times in the fall of 2021 that his client “no longer holds any interest, directly or indirectly in either BHR or Skaneateles.”
Skaneateles LLC, the entity which owns ten percent of BHR Partners, according to
But new documents obtained by Breitbart News, first revealed by nonprofit Marco Polo, show the control of Skaneateles LLC is being held by Kevin Morris, Hunter’s top attorney, who also paid Hunter’s IRS debts.
In a document entitled, “AMENDED AND RESTATED JOINT VENTURE CONTRACT of BHR PARTNERS (SHANGHAI) EQUITY INVESTMENT FUND MANAGEMENT CO., LTD. A FOREIGN-FUNDED ENTERPRISE,” Kevin Morris is listed as the Managing Member of Skaneateles LLC.
The document shows Skaneateles LLC holds a ten percent stake in BHR Partners, equivalent to $3 million.
Breitbart News also obtained a copy of an email with the subject line, “Signing Instructions,” sent by a BHR Partners’ company email address from the name Heng-Yin Zhang to Jimmy Bulger, who is a Biden family longtime business partner. Hunter Biden previously was a BHR Partners board member with Bulger.
Bulger’s firm, Thornton Group LLC, is deeply connected with business in China. Thornton Group LLC is also listed in the agreement, the document shows.
“We have mailed you the documents for signing (Fedex tracking no.: 8137 6269 8141 0448). We would like to share with you the signing instructions of the documents in the order of their placements inside the envelope we send to you,” an email reads to Bulger from Heng-Yin Zhang, an individual with a BHR Partners’ email address.
Breitbart News confirmed and authenticated the venture contract and the “Signing Instructions” email with a source with knowledge of the transaction. In addition, the source confirmed “Kevin Morris is the ‘managing partner’ of Skaneateles, LLC’ and that ‘Skaneateles has a 10 percent stake in the [BHR] venture.’” (Read more: Breitbart, 4/28/2023) (Archive)
May 2, 2023 - Lawsuit against key speech silencers threatens to blow open the Censorship-Industrial Complex
The members of the Election Integrity Partnership and Virality Project conspired with government actors to censor speech at Big Tech companies in violation of the First Amendment, a class-action lawsuit filed on Tuesday alleges. The case, Hines v. Stamos, promises to blow open the Censorship-Industrial Complex.
Jim Hoft, founder of The Gateway Pundit, and Jill Hines, the co-director of Health Freedom Louisiana, a consumer and human rights advocacy organization, filed suit earlier today in a federal court in Louisiana against the organizations and individuals behind the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) and Virality Project, seeking to represent a class of similarly situated plaintiffs. The 88-page complaint alleged four claims against the defendants, all of whom held roles in the EIP and Virality Project’s efforts to censor the plaintiffs’ speech.
According to its website, the Election Integrity Partnership was formed in 2020 “between four of the nation’s leading institutions focused on understanding misinformation and disinformation in the social media landscape: the Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, Graphika, and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.” Then, in early 2021, the same four entities expanded their focus to address supposed Covid-19 “misinformation” on social media, calling the efforts the “Virality Project.”
The class-action lawsuit named as defendants Stanford Internet Observatory as well as the Leland Stanford Junior University and its board of trustees, the latter two of which are allegedly legally responsible for the observatory’s conduct. The complaint also named Alex Stamos, the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, and Renée DiResta, its research manager. Plaintiffs also sued the Atlantic Council, the group’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and the lab’s senior director, Graham Brookie, who is alleged to have played a “leading role in the censorship activities.”
The Allegations
Over the course of the nearly 90-page complaint, the plaintiffs alleged the defendants caused the censorship of Hines, Hoft, and other similarly situated individuals, based on their viewpoints related to the 2020 election and Covid-19. Significantly, the complaint also detailed the extensive connections between, and involvement with, the government and the individual defendants and private entities.
Those allegations indicate government actors helped coordinate the establishment of the EIP, funded its activities, and fed it complaints of supposed election and Covid disinformation and misinformation that the EIP then forwarded to the social media companies for censorship. The complaint also alleged the defendants viewed the EIP as a way to skirt the First Amendment and do for the government what the Constitution prohibited the government from doing for itself: censor speech.
Based on these allegations, the plaintiffs alleged in count one that the defendants conspired to violate the First Amendment. Count two alleged the defendants, while not government employees, were nonetheless acting “under color of State law,” and as such violated the First Amendment. The class-action complaint added two more state law claims, one based on the defendants’ alleged interference with the plaintiffs’ contractual and business relationships. The final claim alleged the defendants intentionally breached the duty they owed the plaintiffs “not to interfere unlawfully with their freedom, rights, and ability to speak, write, listen, read, and communicate freely on social media with others.” (Read more: The Federalist, 5/02/2023) (Archive)
May 3, 2023 - House and Senate GOP seek document from FBI alleging a pay-to-play bribery scheme involving then VP Joe Biden
House and Senate GOP investigators said Wednesday they have learned the FBI possesses a document alleging a pay-to-play bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden and have subpoenaed it in an explosive new twist in their long running corruption probe of the first family.
Senate Budget Committee ranking member and long-time whistleblower advocate Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said they learned of the document, known as FD-1023, from a whistleblower.
“We believe the FBI possesses an unclassified internal document that includes very serious and detailed allegations implicating the current President of the United States,” Grassley said. “What we don’t know is what, if anything, the FBI has done to verify these claims or investigate further. The FBI’s recent history of botching politically charged investigations demands close congressional oversight.”
Said Comer: “The information provided by a whistleblower raises concerns that then-Vice President Biden allegedly engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national. The American people need to know if President Biden sold out the United States of America to make money for himself. Senator Grassley and I will seek the truth to ensure accountability for the American people.”
Comer said his committee issued a subpoena designed to compel the FBI to produce the memo. (Read more: Just the News, 5/03/2023) (Archive)
May 3, 2023 - Epstein was an FBI source before his 2007 plea deal
Back in 2007, the Department of Justice gave Jeffrey Epstein a sweetheart deal that deferred prosecuting Epstein for federal offenses – including the interstate sex trafficking of minors and recruiting minors to engage in commercial sex acts – in exchange for Epstein pleading guilty to Florida state-level solicitation of prostitution and procurement charges.
The deal was shocking in both its timing and scope. It was made before the FBI had interviewed all of Epstein’s victims and before the FBI had seized Epstein’s computers.
It immunized Epstein’s known and unknown co-conspirators who were credibly accused of trafficking and abusing minors, a rare and troubling agreement you will not find in any other federal non-prosecution agreement:
“if Epstein successfully fulfills all of the terms and conditions of this agreement, the United States also agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein, including but not limited to Sarah Kellen, Adriana Ross, Lesley Groff, or Nadia Marcinkova.”
And it implicated both the US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida (Alex Acosta) and Main Justice in Washington, D.C., which approved of the plea deal, delayed the grand jury, and stopped victims from being notified of the agreement in violation of federal law.
Adding to the intrigue were the words of Alex Acosta, the then-US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who gave Epstein his non-prosecution agreement. According to the Daily Beast:
Acosta cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.”
Then we discovered (in 2018) that Epstein had been informing the FBI way back in 2008 after his plea deal with the DOJ had been signed. In the FBI’s words: “Epstein has also provided information to the FBI as agreed upon.”
That raised a red flag, and caused us to suspect that Epstein’s relationship with the FBI went back further than 2008. So we demanded all of Epstein interviews from the FBI. The FBI didn’t deny these records existed; instead, it hid behind the FOIA law enforcement exemption.
Good news – we have defeated that exemption, at least partially. In doing so, we have uncovered records concerning Epstein’s history as a source for the FBI. And it dates back before his 2007 plea deal.
Here’s what we can confirm: Epstein’s history of cooperation with the FBI goes as far back as 2002. We have the summary of his FBI interview – the 302 – in which he reported financial fraud from concerning a potential telecommunications investor. (Read more: Techno Fog/Substack, 5/03/2023) (Archive)
May 4, 2023 - How Corrupt Is Our Current Situation? It’s Worse Than Most Can Fathom…
Everything that preceded the 2020 federal election was a complex system of control by a network of ideologues, federal agencies, allies in the private sector, financial stakeholders and corrupt interests all working toward a common goal. There’s no need to go through the background of how the election was manipulated and how the government and private sector, specifically social media, worked to influence the 2020 outcome because you have all seen it.
Whether it was local election officials working to control outcomes, federal agencies working to support them (CISA, FBI, DHS), financial interests working to fund them (Zuckerberg et al), or social media platforms controlling the visible content and discussion (Twitter Files, Google, Facebook etc.), the objective was all the same. It was a massive one-sided operation against the freewill of the American voter.
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, those same system operators, govt officials, corporate media, private sector groups and social media platforms then circled the wagons to scatter the evidence of their conduct. If you questioned anything you were a threat. That’s the context to the dynamic that unfolded.
Lawfare operatives joined forces with Democrat staffers, and allies in social media platforms all worked in concert to target the voices of anyone who would rise in opposition to the corruption that was stunningly clear in the outcome of the election process. Corporate media then labeled, isolated, ridiculed and marginalized anyone who dared to point out the obvious.
When AG Merrick Garland says this of January 6, 2021: (…) “the Justice Department has conducted one of the largest, most complex, and most resource-intensive investigations in our history. We have worked to analyze massive amounts of physical and digital data. We have recovered devices, decrypted electronic messages, triangulated phones, and pored through tens of thousands of hours of video. We have also benefited from tens of thousands of tips we received from the public. Following these digital and physical footprints, we were able to identify hundreds of people.” {link} The targeting operation needs context.
Do you remember on April 27th when DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz recently said, “more than 3.4 million search queries into the NSA database took place between Dec. 1st, 2020 and Nov. 30th, 2021, by government officials and/or contractors working on behalf of the federal government.” The result was “more than 1 million searches of private documents and communication of Americans that were illegal and non-compliant,” and over “10,000 federal employees have access to that database.” {OIG Testimony}.
Put the statement from Garland together with the statement from Horowitz, and you get an understanding of what was done.
Hundreds of stakeholders in the Lawfare network joined forces with hundreds of people who became staff researchers for a weaponized Congress. Hundreds more social media background agents then poured thousands of hours into feeding private information to the DOJ, FBI, J6 Committee and all of their hired staff working on the project.
How do I know?
I was one of their targets.
Before telling the rest of the story, some background is needed.
I am well versed in the ways of the administrative state and the corrupt systems, institutions and silos that make up our weaponized government. I can (a) see them; (b) predict their activity; and (c) know where their traps and operations are located.
Traveling the deep investigative weeds of the administrative state eventually gives you a set of skills. When people ask how the outlines on this website can seem so far ahead of the sunlight that eventually falls upon the outlined corruption, this is essentially why. When you take these skills on the road, you learn to be a free-range scout, and after a long while you learn how to track the activity.
When I was outlining how the Fourth Branch of Government works and/or Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop and the DHS system operating inside it, I wasn’t shooting from the hip. However, people will always seek to dismiss the uncomfortable truth.
Sometimes you just have to wait for the evidence you know exists to surface, or for a situation to unfold that is driven by a self-fulfilling prophecy. The bizarre CTH predictions turn out to be the truth of the issue because they are based on the factual evidence of the issue.
That level of how the system works came in very handy when I received this subpoena from Chairman Bennie Thompson and the J6 Committee. Warning, things are about to get very uncomfortable if you don’t accept the scale of corruption that exists.
Pay attention to the red box on the page shown. This is essentially the probable cause that justifies the subpoena itself. I have redacted a name in the box for reasons you will see that follow.
I was never in Washington DC on January 6, 2021, nor did I work with or communicate with anyone who was involved in any of the activities that are subject to the J6 committee investigative authority.
I’m going to skip a lot of background noise, irrelevant legal stuff, jurisdictional issues, discoveries from discussions with lawyers and the experience gained in association with this ridiculous subpoena. I am going to focus on the biggest story within it.
Sticking to the information in the Red Box above, notice how the J6 committee has evidence, “public-source information and documents on file”, showing my participation, communication, and contact with people and technology that are material interests to the committee.
Here’s the kicker…. I had no clue what the hell they were talking about. There’s not a single aspect of their outline that I had any knowledge or connection of.
I had no idea what Zello was. I had no idea who 1% watchdog might be. I had never heard of “Stop the Steal J6” or associated “channel.” I had never heard of the person redacted, and I had never communicated with any Oath Keeper, any communication system, or platform, or anyone or anything – nothing – that is outlined in that subpoena.
Those points of evidence outlined in the subpoena had no connection to me at all.
The subpoena might as well have been asking me to appear in Michigan because my Red Ferrari was involved in a hit and run accident, during my trip to Detroit. I don’t own a Ferrari; I have never been to Michigan; I certainly never had an accident; I wasn’t on a trip and have never visited Detroit. The entire construct of their probable cause for the subpoena was silly. Complete and utter nonsense.
That said, how could there be “public records” and “documentary” evidence of something that never happened?
At first, I thought this was some silly case of mistaken identity and they just sent a subpoena to the wrong person. However, the investigators were adamant the evidence existed, and the need for testimony was required.
After taking advice from several smart people, and after discovering the costs associated with just the reply to the committee and/or representation therein; suddenly I realized there might be more value for me in this subpoena than the committee. After all, how can there be public-records and documents that I own a red Ferrari and went to Michigan when I don’t and never did.
After several back and forths I discovered, through their admissions of their own research, and through documents they extracted as an outcome of their tasks to prove the merit of their claims, that someone *inside* Twitter had created a fictitious identity of me associated with the networks and communications as the investigators described them.
Think about what was discovered here.
Someone inside the Twitter platform, an employee of Twitter, had made a decision to target me. As a result: (a) they had been doing this for a long time with a specific goal in mind; and (b) they created an elaborate trail of background activity and identity that was entirely fabricated.
Eventually, my assigned investigative unit admitted this.
Once, the federal investigators realized what took place they wanted to get rid of me -and my snark filled curiosity- with great urgency.
They also had an ‘oh shit’ moment, when they contemplated everything, including what they had revealed to me from the outset of my contact, now several months prior.
What I discovered in this experience was that DHS, and by extension DOJ/FBI and the January 6 investigators, had direct administrative level backdoors into all social media platforms.
Overlay the Twitter files now, and then expand your thinking….
In their quest to prove that I owned a Red Ferrari, traveled to Michigan and had a hit-and-run accident, these investigators outlined to me how the United States Government, through their DHS authority, has employees, agents and contractors with open portals into all social media platforms.
Yes, the federal government is inside the mechanics of the systems (Twitter, Facebook, Meta, Instagram, Google, YouTube, WhatsApp, Zello, etc) and they have administrative access in real time to monitor, review, extract and evaluate everything, soup-to-nuts.
It was only because the investigators and forensic data knuckleheads have these portals, that they were able to locate the source of the fabricated evidence they were originally attributing to me. This was an investigative process and research discovery being conducted in the data processing systems of Twitter in real time as they questioned me.
Once they realized what had taken place, and as soon as I started asking how they were making these admissions (now carrying an apologetic certainty), suddenly the investigators wanted no further contact or communication with me. You’re good, whoopsie daisy, our bad, sorry.
Now, take some time to fully digest and absorb what I have just shared.
The U.S. government is worried about TikTok, because U.S. citizen data might be extracted?
Meanwhile, the U.S. government, at a fully unrestricted administrative level, is inside Twitter, Facebook, Meta, Insta, YouTube etc., running amok and extracting anything – including private messages… and they’re somehow worried about protecting us from TikTok data collection. Think about it.
(Conservative Treehouse, 5/4/2023) (Archive)
May 5, 2023 - The government wants to renew FISA 702, yet drags feet on transparency and needs reform
The government is lobbying hard to retain FISA Section 702, which it uses to gain warrantless access to Americans’ communications. At the same time, it’s stalling on a statutory obligation declassify crucial information about how this program has been operating. 1/14
— Noah Chauvin (@NoahChauvin) May 5, 2023
My @BrennanCenter colleague @LizaGoitein explained in this thread how the contents of the report underscore that Congress should not reauthorize Section 702 without wide-reaching surveillance reforms. 3/14https://t.co/8uY07Noyfj
— Noah Chauvin (@NoahChauvin) May 5, 2023
Some background: Section 702 requires ODNI and DOJ to submit to the FISA Court surveillance procedures and a certification that the government is not targeting Americans. The court can approve these procedures, or require additional information or modifications. 5/14
— Noah Chauvin (@NoahChauvin) May 5, 2023
We don’t know why it’s taking so long for the government to declassify this opinion. However, we do know that the FISA Court delayed issuing it by several months, which suggests the court was dissatisfied with the government’s use of Section 702. 7/14 pic.twitter.com/aZmBydCYR1
— Noah Chauvin (@NoahChauvin) May 5, 2023
Declassified government documents have revealed that FBI officials have conducted myriad inappropriate searches under Section 702, such as one based on a witness’s report that two men “of Middle Eastern descent” loaded cleaning supplies into a truck. 9/14 pic.twitter.com/j3eWgsfNsA
— Noah Chauvin (@NoahChauvin) May 5, 2023
The violations catalogued in previous FISA Court opinions beg the question: What led the Court to delay the 2021 certification? Was it more unlawful queries? Or was it some other systemic problem with Section 702’s operation that we don’t even know about yet? 11/14
— Noah Chauvin (@NoahChauvin) May 5, 2023
The government should release this opinion now – and pending its release, Congress must take all of the government’s claims about its recent conduct of Section 702 surveillance with a grain of salt. 13/14
— Noah Chauvin (@NoahChauvin) May 5, 2023
In addition, the surveillance reforms Congress should enact this year must include a reasonable deadline for declassifying FISA Court opinions. The government cannot be allowed to distort future legislative and public debates by delaying the release of vital information. 14/14
— Noah Chauvin (@NoahChauvin) May 5, 2023
May 8, 2023 - ChatGPT helps journalist find scrubbed articles on internet re Antony Blinken's connection to the Aspen Institute who held a "hack and dump" exercise in September 2020 on Biden laptop
(…) Michael Shellenberger posted a “Twitter Files” thread on December 19, 2022 where he uncovered a “hack-and-dump” operation that was conducted as a “tabletop” exercise by the Aspen Institute, two months prior to the 2020 election. Much like the World Health Organization ran Event 201, a think tank that game-planned pandemic scenarios strikingly similar to the circumstances surrounding COVID-19, the Aspen Institute’s “Hack-and-Dump” exercise revolved around the handling of information. Ironically (or not), it revolved around information dumped in relation to Hunter Biden’s leaked emails.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, “Aspen Digital, an arm of the liberal Aspen Institute, in September 2020 convened a working group of social media executives, journalists, and academics to develop a coverage strategy for a hypothetical “hack and dump” of Hunter Biden’s emails.”
Garrett Graff, the Director of Cyber Initiatives at Aspen Digital, published an article for Wired just a week before Miranda Devine’s explosive, and heavily censored, article in New York Post. Graff’s article was a playbook for how the media should respond to an “October Surprise”. The byline of the article, given those in attendance of their “event”, sounds more like marching orders than an informative piece: “The media knows it screwed up in 2016 with John Podesta. Here’s how it should do better in the final weeks of the 2020 race.”
It gets even more interesting. We now know that Antony Blinken has close ties to the Aspen Institute through his membership with the Aspen Strategy Group. The extent, however, is unclear as much of this seems to have been outright scrubbed from the internet. Literally: scrubbed.
About the only relation between Blinken and the Aspen Institute online still is a publication by the Aspen Strategy Group titled “American Purpose” that lists Blinken as “Staff Director, U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.”