December 29, 2022 at 07:20AM. BREAKING: Internal Source Says “Significant Miscount” In Abe Hamadeh’s Recount Nets Hamadeh With Hundreds of New Votes In Race Called by 511 Votes
A “significant miscount” of hundreds of votes has been discovered in the recount results for Trump-Endorsed Abe Hamadeh’s statewide Attorney General’s race.
Hamadeh was only down by 511 votes against Mayes out of more than 2.5 million ballots cast in the Attorney General race.
The Gateway Pundit reported that on Election Day in Maricopa County, over 50% of tabulators and printers failed the moment that polls opened, causing voters to be turned away from the polls and creating long wait times of four hours or more. According to cybersecurity expert Clay Parikh’s testimony in Kari Lake’s election lawsuit, this was an intentional act aimed at disenfranchising Republican voters who turned out 3:1 for Trump-Endorsed candidates.
As The Gateway Pundit reported, Hamadeh contested the results in a lawsuit filed in the Mohave County Superior Court against Kris Mayes, Katie Hobbs, and all Arizona County election officials.
The Gateway Pundit reported that Mohave County Superior Court Judge Lee F. Jantzen tossed out Abe Hamadeh’s election challenge in the Arizona Attorney General race against Democrat Kris Mayes.
The judge denied the challenge based on testimony from Hamadeh’s lawyer, Tim LaSota, acknowledging that based on the ballot inspection (a small sample of ballots), his client would not be able to get over 511 votes needed to overcome Mayes.
However, Charlie Kirk tweeted earlier that hundreds of new votes were discovered for Abe, and corrupt Secretary of State Katie Hobbs is attempting to hide this discrepancy from the public.
Kirk: BREAKING: An internal source has shared that a rural AZ county has found a significant miscount netting @AbrahamHamadeh with hundreds of new votes. Sources suspect @katiehobbs is not quickly releasing this revelation to provide as little time as possible for public reaction.
This was also confirmed by leftist Garrett Archer, who says the “discrepancy is not from Maricopa or Pima.”
This could overturn the election that was decided by 511 votes. At the very least, it could help Abe’s case move forward.
Hamadeh tweeted before this new revelation came out that he will assess his legal options when the recount results are released tomorrow.
December 28, 2022 at 07:11AM Watch: ‘Libs of TikTok’ Unveils Her Identity, Reveals Secret Offer from DeSantis
A televised interview last week yielded a surprising anecdote about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The moment came during Tucker Carlson’s interview with Chaya Raichik, the previously anonymous woman behind the frequently-viral Libs of TikTok Twitter account.
Although she had previously been interviewed by Carlson, Raichik’s face was shown on air for the first time during the interview on “Tucker Carlson Today.”
During the interview, Raichik talked about the backlash she has experienced for her Twitter page, which reposts videos created by liberal leftists — often public school teachers or others who work with children — who gleefully share how they promote transgenderism and other LGBT issues to the youngsters in their care.
Raichik and her family members have been harassed over the Twitter posts, particularly after Raichik was “doxed,” or had her personal information publicized — in April by Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz.
It was a frightening experience, but Raichik described a moment when support and encouragement came from a surprising source.
“When I was doxed, someone from Ron DeSantis’ team called me,” Raichik told Carlson.
“She said, ‘The governor wanted me to get you a message … he said, If you don’t feel safe — for you or your family — if you need a place to go, to hide, to stay … you can come to the governor’s mansion.
“‘We have a guest house for you, and you can come and stay as long as you need.’”
Do you follow “Libs of TikTok?”
58% (37 Votes)
42% (27 Votes)
Carlson was incredulous. “Really?” “What?” “The governor of Florida?” he interjected at various points in the interview.
“Yes. I can’t even — I was … almost in tears,” Raichik told the Fox news host. “Like, the governor of Florida … like he has nothing better … “
“And you’re living in California?” Carlson asked.
“I’m living in California,” she confirmed. “And he took time out of his — I’m assuming — extremely busy schedule. I mean, he’s the governor of Florida. And to send someone to call me, to make sure I’m safe.”
“That’s crazy!” Carlson responded.
“Unreal,” Raichik agreed.
“And invited you to stay at his house?”
“Yeah,” Raichik nodded.
In a Twitter post Tuesday, Raichik shared an epilogue to that incident.
“I recently got the opportunity to thank @GovRonDeSantis in person,” she posted.
“He was so gracious. Brushed it off. He said ‘of course! You do great work!’ It wasn’t even a question for him.
“Genuinely a kindhearted person.”
Her Twitter followers were not surprised at that revelation, either.
“That’s our Heavy D for ya,” wrote @Ceceliaism. “‘Thank me for what? Doing what any decent person would do? Psssh.’ Love my Gov.”
Several detractors chimed in to accuse Raichik of hate, but others defended her actions.
“[I]’m sure the attacks will come at you from every direction. Be strong sister, There are millions of Americans with you and behind you!” wrote @RealitySaloon.
“You are a brave American hero and I thank you for everything you do,” wrote @Nocturnal_Count. “Our governor is the best. You won’t only be protected by our governor but you will also be protected by a lot of us patriots in Florida as well. You have a lot of people behind you and who care about you.”
December 27, 2022 at 07:02AM California and New York have each lost more than half a MILLION residents since April 2020
California and New York continue to shed residents as new Census Bureau data shows that each state has lost more than 500,000 residents since July 2020.
As rents continue to climb to sky-high levels in Manhattan and the other five-boroughs, and crime surges are nowhere near ending, one-time New York residents are leaving in droves.
The state has lost more than 523,000 residents since April of 2020. Its population fell from 20,201,230 to 19,677,151 – and that figure is just the record through July 2022.
In California, where the weather is mostly warm, but once-a-year massive wildfires and treacherous mudslides threaten homes, the population has also dipped by slightly more than half-a-million since 2020.
Deputy director of external affairs at the California Department of Finance H.D. Palmer told the Sacramento Bee that the shrinking population of the Golden State is a reflection of its ongoing housing affordability crisis.
‘If you talk to demographers, they’ll say that one of the factors is the cost of housing. And that’s continued to be a challenging issue for the state,’ he said.
December 26, 2022 at 05:35AM Judge Peter Thompson Rules Elections with Broken Machines in 60% of Precincts and No Chain of Custody for Ballots Are Free, Fair and Certifiable
Phoenix, Arizona – Kari Lake has filed a lawsuit against her opponent Katie Hobbs, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, Maricopa County board of Supervisors members Bill Gates, Clint Hickman, Jack Sellers, Thomas Galvin and Steve Gallardo and Maricopa County Elections Director Scott Jarret for their roles in the most botched and embarrassing Election Day in the history of Arizona.
Kari Lake said “This lawsuit puts an end to any doubt that our elections, especially in Maricopa County, are rigged and massive reforms are needed if the public is ever to trust the results again.” Lake continued, “Our sacred vote was trampled on. Every Arizonan should be furious, regardless of Party. Despite the desperate lies by the Fake News, my team has filed one of the strongest Election Lawsuits in history.”
10 Key Points of the lawsuit, which can be read in full at SaveArizonaFund.com:
· Cyber Expert Clay Parikh: Machine Failures that Arizona voters experienced on election day could not have occurred absent intentional misconduct. In summary, the errors were the result of deliberate actions and could have been prevented.
· Between 15,603 and 29,257 Republican voters disenfranchised. Over 300,000 mail-in ballots had no chain of custody. This is a violation of Arizona law.
· Whistleblowers: Tens of thousands of illegal ballots counted, many with little to no signature verification.
· 59% of the 223 Voting Centers in Maricopa County had printer and tabulator failure on election day. Reminder: Election Day Voters went for 3 to 1 for Kari Lake. Clear voter disenfranchisement in primarily red districts (Rich Baris Numbers)
· Uncounted “Door 3 Ballots” were co-mingled with already tabulated ballots. There is strong reason to believe the actual number of door 3 ballots is far greater than the reported 16,724
· Katie Hobbs and Stephen Richer both colluded with the federal government to censor constituents. This is election interference and a violation of the First Amendment.
· Conflicts of Interest:
o Bill Gates – Spent the last two years obstructing every election integrity effort in AZ and contributed to a PAC that sought to undermine “America First” candidates
o Stephen Richer – Formed and used a well-funded PAC to defeat Kari Lake
o Katie Hobbs Secretary of State – governed over her own election
o Steven Gallardo – he is now a member of Katie Hobbs’ transition team.
· Runbeck Whistleblower says 298,942 early ballots had no chain of custody.
· Maricopa County adds 25,000 ballots to totals AFTER election day.
· Video footage, first-hand accounts, and expert testimony directly contradict Maricopa County officials’ public statements deliberately attempting to downplay these events.
These points are all thoroughly supported by the affidavits of whistleblowers within the system and backed by written expert testimony.
In addition to skillfully laid out details of a completely botched election day, the lawsuit also names Secretary of State Hobbs as a corrupt operator who successfully silenced her political enemy’s freedom of speech by demanding Twitter take down their tweets which were critical of her.
The relief sought includes throwing out illegal ballots, which would result in Lake’s rightful win over Hobbs in the November 8th election, or result in a new election conducted in Maricopa County, with a special master as administrator. In addition, inspection of the “signature verified” ballots that are highly questionable because of whistleblower testimony, is requested as relief in Lake’s suit.
December 23, 2022 at 07:19AM Jan. 6 Committee Releases Full Report of Probe into Capitol Breach
The Jan. 6 Committee has released its long-anticipated report of its investigation into the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in which its authors took aim at former President Donald Trump, blaming him for having engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The 814-page full report (pdf) comes days after the panel released an executive summary (pdf) of the report, and targeted Trump by voting to refer him to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to consider at least four criminal charges, including obstruction and insurrection. The referral is a symbolic move, and the department is not obliged to act upon the panel’s recommendations.
The Jan. 6 committee, which has nine members, has long been criticized for its apparent partisanship, in part because the only two Republicans on the panel—Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.)—are both known for their strong opposition to Trump.
The authors of the report concluded that “the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed.” They wrote that “[n]one of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.”
The group’s final report represents the culmination of 18 months of investigation and is based on the interviews of more than 1,000 witnesses, ten hearings, as well as millions of pages of documents, including emails, texts, and phone records.
The report lists 17 specific allegations the authors made based on the information they gathered. It also proposes 11 legislative recommendations in efforts to prevent another breach.
“This report will provide greater detail about the multistep effort devised and driven by Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election and block the transfer of power,” Jan. 6 Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) wrote in a foreword in the report.
The Jan. 6 committee is set to dissolve at the end of the current Congress in January 2023, when Republicans are set to take control of the House.
Jan. 6 Committee Chairman U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Mass.), and Jan. 6 Committee Vice Chairwoman Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) in the Canon House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Dec. 19, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
‘Highly Partisan’
Trump, in remarks following the release of the final report, called it “highly partisan” and a “witch hunt.” The report had failed to “study the reason for the [Jan. 6] protest, election fraud,” he wrote.
It marked the first time that lawmakers had referred a former president for criminal prosecution. A charge of insurrection would, if a conviction is passed, bar Trump from running for office again. Trump had announced in November that he would seek the presidency again.
Trump was previously acquitted in February 2021 by the Senate in an impeachment trial over an insurrection incitement charge. Prior to that, he was acquitted in February 2020 by the Senate in his first impeachment trial on two charges—abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
“These folks don’t get it that when they come after me, people who love freedom rally around me. It strengthens me. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” Trump wrote in a statement posted on his Truth Social platform on Dec. 19 in response to the panel’s criminal referrals.
He added, “Americans know that I pushed for 20,000 troops to prevent violence on Jan 6, and that I went on television and told everyone to go home.”
Then-President Donald Trump speaks to the media before departing the White House to Joint Base Andrews en route to San Diego, Calif., on March 13, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
Counter Report
Ahead of the final report’s release, the Jan. 6 committee made public a collection of 34 transcripts of witness testimony from its investigation on Dec. 21. Most of the 34 witnesses did not answer questions during all or at least part of their testimony, instead opting to assert their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The panel later released several moretranscripts of witness testimony on early Dec. 22.
Meanwhile, five House Republicans on Dec. 21 published a separate counter report (pdf) that focused on the security failures at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The report, led by incoming House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), showed that staffers under House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had played a key role in the security planning that failed to protect the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The five lawmakers who released the report were those initially nominated by Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to join the Jan. 6 committee. Pelosi had previously refused to seat two of the five, after which all were pulled from consideration. McCarthy, in response, had called Pelosi’s move “an egregious abuse of power.”
Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) preside over a Joint session of Congress to certify the 2020 Electoral College results after protestors stormed the Capitol earlier in the day in Washington on Jan. 6, 2020. (Erin Schaff/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
The joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, was temporarily interrupted when a sizable group of protesters entered the Capitol building and its surrounds. Outside were thousands of other mostly peaceful protesters who had gathered in Washington on the day to express concerns about election integrity.
A total of five deaths were recorded in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 incident. Three of the deaths were ultimately determined to be natural causes, one of the deaths was ruled a homicide due to actions of a Capitol Police officer, and the remaining death was ruled as an accident, but video unsealed in December 2021 suggested that the person was struck by a police officer prior as she lay unconscious near the Capitol building.
As of late December, more than 900 individuals have been dealt charges by the DOJ, accusing them of having committed federal crimes on Jan. 6, 2021. More than 480 of them have pleaded guilty to one or more charges.
Mimi Nguyen Ly is a senior reporter for the Epoch Times. She covers U.S. news and world news. Contact her at mimi.nl@epochtimes.com
Witnesses had lost hope and disappeared. Criminal suspect No. 1 had become president. And the long-awaited indictment now seemed unreachable.
Then, American prosecutor Jack Smith came along and took charge, sending his investigators on an aggressive mission to win back reluctant witnesses—by targeting the tight-lipped politicians and militant nationalists who had kept them silent.
The story may sound familiar, if not a bit like resistance fan-fiction. But this story is actually about Smith’s efforts in Kosovo, a small country in southeastern Europe that was historically an Albanian enclave in Serbia. It was difficult every step of the way. Smith had to defend his work from widespread accusations that he was conducting an unfair political prosecution to remove the nation’s favorite leader. And the narrative was that cooperators are traitors—and that these lawyers like Smith were trying to destroy the country.
It may prove to be an invaluable experience.
Since the U.S. Department of Justice appointed Smith as the trusted special counsel investigating former President Donald Trump last month, there have been dozens of news profiles focusing on his time as a domestic prosecutor investigating public corruption. Several have even incorrectly identified the international court he served on. But this is the first sweeping look at what exactly he accomplished while on a special assignment abroad in Europe, where he took down Kosovo’s sitting president—and gained the credentials to target an American one.
“It’s not like this is his first rodeo,” said David Schwendiman, who led the Kosovo investigation until Smith took over. “It has huge political consequences. It takes bravery. Jack’s got to decide whether he’s going to indict a former president of the United States. But he did the same thing when it came to Hashim Thaçi.”
Kosovo’s now ex-president remains trapped inside a jail in the Dutch city of The Hague. Understanding how he got there helps contextualize Smith’s legacy at the controversial international prosecutor’s office he led until last month—and his ability to face Trump now.
The break-up of post-Communist Yugoslavia in the early 1990s led to a brutal war of succession between its constituent peoples and republics marked by atrocities including mass rape and murder and widespread ethnic cleansing. The conflicts that erupted first in Slovenia and then Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Serbia captured global attention and drew in international peacekeepers—who all too often stood by as the slaughter continued. In its aftermath, most of the efforts at punishing people for crimes against humanity were directed at the Serbs who ordered or led the bloody attacks on civilians, men such as Slobodan Milošević and Ratko Mladić.
Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaçi, who resigned and was taken into custody of a war crimes tribunal, appears for the first time before the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague, Netherlands Nov. 9, 2020.
Jerry Lampen/Pool via Reuters
Rarely were accusations lobbed at the NATO-backed Kosovo rebels whose independence fight against Serbian forces culminated in the NATO bombardment of targets inside Serbia in 1999. That is, until a Swiss prosecutor wrote a tell-all book in 2008 claiming that the Kosovo Liberation Army had committed torture too—and that the KLA had even engaged in a sick plot to forcefully remove organs from prisoners to sell them on the black market.
When an official European government report in 2011 backed up some of those claims, American and European diplomats joined forces to set up a new international criminal court to focus solely on KLA abuses, pressuring Kosovo to accept the results.
The United States, known for its buttoned-down approach to law enforcement, supplied the lawyers to build the case. Clint Williamson, who had previously prosecuted Serbs, led the first iteration of that investigation until 2014. David Schwendiman, another federal prosecutor-turned-diplomat, managed to launch the new Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor’s Office based in the Netherlands during the next four years.
By the time Smith was appointed to lead this new office in 2018, the effort had stalled, according to two sources who discussed the firsthand bureaucratic drama on condition of anonymity. The sheer passage of time itself had harmed the investigation, they said. Developing a new court with new rules and launching a new law enforcement operation was no joke. But the entire effort was starting to look like one of the West’s administrative exercises leading nowhere.
It had been a full 19 years since KLA rebels had allegedly held these secret medical operations on captives, and still not a single indictment had been filed by this new office. Evidence in Kosovo had been destroyed. And the few witnesses brave enough to come forward were even more frightened, because international prosecutors had failed to deliver on promises they made. By now, KLA veterans had a stranglehold on domestic politics. And a wartime militia leader, Thaçi, had risen to become Kosovo’s prime minister—formally declaring independence from Serbia in 2008—and eventually president.
“Serbian oppression was horrible,” Williamson told The Daily Beast. “KLA was given a lot of credit by the population for going out and fighting the Serbs. They had hero status. What happened is that Thaçi and others exploited this to advance their political fortunes.”
Smith, dressed in purple robes at a new office in The Hague, now faced a hugely popular president 1,000 miles away who felt emboldened by his nationalist credentials and protected by a prevailing narrative: that any attack on him was an attack on Kosovo itself.
“This is a formula that worked for years: ‘This is an attack on our independence, our freedom.’
By trying to collectivize this, they tried to undermine the judicial process,” Williamson noted.
Smith’s first priority was to breathe life back into the investigation itself, said Williamson, who originally recommended the younger prosecutor for the job.
“When Jack came in, he really just made a full-court press to get these witnesses that had contributed to the process earlier to come onboard again. He was pushing his prosecutors to get these witnesses back into the fold,” Williamson said.
That itself was a monumental feat.
“Witness intimidation is endemic in war crimes cases, because nobody wants to testify against war heroes. The KLA is perceived as liberators,” said Dean Pineles, an American judge who served on another international court that has reviewed war crimes in Kosovo.
Once they got insiders talking again, Smith then quickly developed a sense of how Thaçi and others operated. Legal scholars have noted how prosecuting wartime atrocity crimes—conducted by soldiers at the direction of leaders who bear ultimate responsibility but remain protected by their clan—is something like taking down a mob. Investigators need to accumulate the basic evidence of a crime—like what happened and where—while mapping out a chain of command.
“This is not unlike organized crime prosecutions. A mafia boss very rarely pulls the trigger himself. He’s ordering somebody to do it. You have to develop the linkages between the trigger puller and the big boss who’s giving the orders for this to be done—or creating the conditions for this to happen,” Williamson said. “This was an area where Jack made a lot of progress, fleshing out these relationships with the structures in Kosovo… who was responsible for what.”
Smith’s office also had its fair share of questionable incidents under his watch.
The first shocker came in June 2020, when his office appeared to have broken the rules by revealing it had secretly indicted Thaçi himself months earlier. But the announcement, made in a press release, was published just as the Kosovan president had hopped a plane bound for a meeting with Donald Trump in the White House.
The move, perceived by some as extremely calculated, is still shrouded with intrigue. It now appears that prosecutors were trying to stop Thaçi from using a meeting with Trump to pressure the United States to drop the case, according to a well-connected person monitoring the case who asked to remain on background.
The surprise nature of the announcement temporarily robbed the Trump administration of a diplomatic win, given that it intended to use the meeting to normalize Kosovo-Serbia relations. That created a dotted line between Trump and Smith for the first time.
But it also put the Trump intelligence chief who put together that meeting, Richard Grenell, at odds with Smith. (They’re set to be opposing each other once again. In recent months, Grenell has come out to defend Trump against various parts of the DOJ investigation, justifying how Trump kept classified documents at home post-presidency and dismissing the seriousness of Trump’s Jan. 6 insurrection.)
The second questionable incident on Smith’s watch came in the form of an embarrassing blunder—or shockingly underhanded prosecutorial gambit, depending on whom you ask.
In September 2020, highly secret prosecutorial records—printed-out communications and lists of witnesses—somehow ended up at the KLA war veterans association office. The prosecutor-hating vets group shared the documents with journalists. When at least one local TV station broadcast the names, it put a dangerously large target on the backs of witnesses. Smith’s deputy, a British attorney named Kwai Hong Ip, quit shortly thereafter. (Ip did not reply to a request for comment.)
Hashim Thaçi, center, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) political chief talks at a news conference in the town of Trpeza on March 13, 1999.
Oleg Popov/Reuters
Smith used the opportunity to indict the war veterans group’s two leaders, Hysni Gucati and Nasim Haradinaj, who eventually got sentenced to four years in prison for obstructing the investigation, violating its secrecy, and intimidating witnesses.
The move was perceived by some as a sting operation—one that took down Thaçi’s muscle and sent a chilling message to anyone who would target a witness. But everyone who spoke to The Daily Beast about Smith acknowledged that he came out on top.
Smith spent the following two years building the cases and prosecuting them in court. He left the office last month to take on his new DOJ role as a special counsel targeting Trump.
The Justice Department declined to make Smith available for an interview.
“I have absolute respect and admiration for the man. He is very, very smart. His work ethic is extraordinary,” Schwendiman said.
Sources for this story unanimously noted that Smith’s experience combating the Kosovo hero narrative prepares him for the onslaught brought by Trump, who has used social posts and interviews with propagandists to cast doubt on the FBI’s two ongoing investigations. And several drew parallels between the challenges he faced with Albanian mob tactics and the ones he does now, as he leads the effort against an American president who has shielded himself with MAGA loyalists.
Smith, they said, is a natural fit.
“They couldn’t have picked a better person for it… Jack is a very hands-on prosecutor. He drives his staff to work very hard. He’s diligent and meticulous about detail,” Williamson said.
All eyes are now on Smith as Americans anxiously await a potential indictment of Trump, which might come in weeks, months, or not at all. But those who pay attention across the Atlantic could soon get a preview of how effective he really is. Kosovo’s disgraced former president is expected to stand trial sometime in early 2023.
A defense lawyer said Bankman-Fried planned to fight being sent to the US.
Counsel for SBF has requested bail be set at $250,000.
Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams called the case “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history” and said the investigation of the alleged scheme is “very much ongoing.”
Which may explain why presiding judge JoyAnn Ferguson-Pratt denied SBF’s bail application, highlighting his “risk of flight” and ordered the crypto executive to be held in custody at the Bahamas Department of Corrections until Feb. 8.
The case has been adjourned to the said date.
* * *
The US Securities and Exchange Commission said it will file charges against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried on Tuesday relating to violations of securities law, accusing him of “orchestrating a scheme to defraud equity investors in FTX” and seeking to ban him from the cryptocurrency industry.
“We allege that Sam Bankman-Fried built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors that it was one of the safest buildings in crypto,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler
The SEC has charged Bankman-Fried with violating the anti-fraud provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The SEC’s complaint seeks injunctions against future securities law violation that prohibits Bankman-Fried from participating in the issuance, purchase, offer, or sale of any securities except for his own personal account.
Here are some of the wildest accusations from the SEC’s 28-page filing:
SBF improperly diverted assets to his privately held crypto hedge fund:
Unbeknownst to those investors (and to FTX’s trading customers), Bankman-Friedwas orchestrating a massive, years-long fraud, diverting billions of dollars of the trading platform’s customer funds for his own personal benefit and to help grow his crypto empire.
Throughout this period, Bankman-Fried portrayed himself as a responsible leader of the crypto community. He touted the importance of regulation and accountability. He told the public, including investors, that FTX was both innovative and responsible. Customers around the world believed his lies, and sent billions of dollars to FTX, believing their assets were secure on the FTX trading platform. But from the start, Bankman-Fried improperly diverted customer assets to his privately-held crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research LLC (“Alameda”), and then used those customer funds to make undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases, and large political donations.
Bankman-Fried then exempted his crypto hedge fund, Alameda, from risk mitigation procedures:
He told investors and prospective investors that FTX had top-notch, sophisticated automated risk measures in place to protect customer assets, that those assets were safe and secure, and that Alameda was just another platform customer with no special privileges. These statements were false and misleading. In truth, Bankman-Fried had exempted Alameda from the risk mitigation measures and had provided Alameda with significant special treatment on the FTX platform, including a virtually unlimited “line of credit” funded by the platform’s customers.
While he spent lavishly on office space and condominiums in The Bahamas, and sank billions of dollars of customer funds into speculative venture investments, Bankman-Fried’s house of cards began to crumble.
Here’s how he diverted funds:
Bankman-Fried diverted FTX customer funds to Alameda in essentially two ways: (1) by directing FTX customers to deposit fiat currency (e.g., U.S. Dollars) into bank accounts controlled by Alameda; and (2) by enabling Alameda to draw down from a virtually limitless “line of credit” at FTX, which was funded by FTX customer assets.
As a result, there was no meaningful distinction between FTX customer funds and Alameda’s own funds. Bankman-Fried thus gave Alameda carte blanche to use FTX customer assets for its own trading operations and for whatever other purposes Bankman-Fried saw fit.
SBF had a secret ‘[email protected] account with a negative $8 billion balance’:
Bankman-Fried directed FTX to have customers send funds to North Dimension in an effort to hide the fact that the funds were being sent to an account controlled by Alameda.
Alameda did not segregate these customer funds, but instead commingled them with its other assets, and used them indiscriminately to fund its trading operations and Bankman-Fried’s other ventures.
This multi-billion-dollar liability was reflected in an internal account in the FTX database that was not tied to Alameda but was instead called “[email protected].” Characterizing the amount of customer funds sent to Alameda as an internal FTX account had the effect of concealing Alameda’s liability in FTX’s internal systems.
In 2022, FTX began trying to separate Alameda’s portion of the liability in the “[email protected]” account from the portion that was attributable to FTX (i.e., to separate out customer deposits sent to Alameda-controlled bank accounts from deposits sent to FTX-controlled bank accounts). Alameda’s portion — which amounted to more than $8 billion in FTX customer assets that had been deposited into Alameda-controlled bank accounts — was initially moved to a different account in the FTX database.
However, because this change caused FTX’s internal systems to automatically charge Alameda interest on the more than $8 billion liability, Bankman-Fried directed that the Alameda liability be moved to an account that would not be charged interest. This account was associated with an individual that had no apparent connection to Alameda. As a result, this change had the effect of further concealing Alameda’s liability in FTX’s internal systems.
SBF has claimed in interviews he ‘wasn’t aware’ of how illiquid Alameda’s collateral had become, yet according to the SEC:
Bankman-Fried was well aware of the impact of Alameda’s positions on FTX’s risk profile. On or about October 12, 2022, for example, Bankman-Fried, in a series of tweets, analyzed the manipulation of a digital asset on an unrelated crypto platform. In explaining what occurred, Bankman-Fried distinguished between an asset’s “current price” and its “fair price,” and recognized that “large positions – especially in illiquid tokens – can have a lot of impact.”
Bankman-Fried asserted that FTX’s risk engine required customers to “fully collateralize a position” when the customer’s position is “large and illiquid enough.” But Bankman-Fried knew, or was reckless in not knowing, that by not mitigating for the impact of large and illiquid tokens posted as collateral by Alameda, FTX was engaging in precisely the same conduct, and creating the same risk, that he was warning against.
SEC charged Bankman-Fried for orchestrating a scheme to defraud equity investors in FTX Trading Ltd. (FTX). The regulatory body noted that the former CEO concealed his “diversion of FTX customers’ funds to crypto trading firm Alameda Research while raising more than $1.8 billion from investors.”
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
Plaintiff: SECURITIES AND ) EXCHANGE COMMISSION,
Defendant: SAMUEL BANKMAN-FRIED Plaintiff Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Commission”), for its complaint against Defendant, Samuel Bankman-Fried (“Bankman-Fried”), alleges as follows:
SUMMARY
1. From at least May 2019 through November 2022, Bankman-Fried engaged in a scheme to defraud equity investors in FTX Trading Ltd. (“FTX”), the crypto asset trading platform of which he was CEO and co-founder, at the same time that he was also defrauding the platform’s customers. Bankman-Fried raised more than $1.8 billion from investors, including U.S. investors, who bought an equity stake in FTX believing that FTX had appropriate controls and risk management measures. Unbeknownst to those investors (and to FTX’s trading customers), Bankman-Fried was orchestrating a massive, years-long fraud, diverting billions of dollars of the trading platform’s customer funds for his own personal benefit and to help grow his crypto empire.
2. Throughout this period, Bankman-Fried portrayed himself as a responsible leader of the crypto community. He touted the importance of regulation and accountability. He told the public, including investors, that FTX was both innovative and responsible. Customers around the world believed his lies, and sent billions of dollars to FTX, believing their assets were secure on the FTX trading platform. But from the start, Bankman-Fried improperly diverted customer assets to his privately-held crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research LLC (“Alameda”), and then used those customer funds to make undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases, and large political donations.
3. Bankman-Fried hid all of this from FTX’s equity investors, including U.S. investors, from whom he sought to raise billions of dollars in additional funds. He repeatedly cast FTX as an innovative and conservative trailblazer in the crypto markets. He told investors and prospective investors that FTX had top-notch, sophisticated automated risk measures in place to protect customer assets, that those assets were safe and secure, and that Alameda was just another platform customer with no special privileges. These statements were false and misleading. In truth, Bankman-Fried had exempted Alameda from the risk mitigation measures and had provided Alameda with significant special treatment on the FTX platform, including a virtually unlimited “line of credit” funded by the platform’s customers.
4. While he spent lavishly on office space and condominiums in The Bahamas, and sank billions of dollars of customer funds into speculative venture investments, Bankman-Fried’s house of cards began to crumble. When prices of crypto assets plummeted in May 2022, Alameda’s lenders demanded repayment on billions of dollars of loans. Despite the fact that Alameda had, by this point, already taken billions of dollars of FTX customer assets, it was unable to satisfy its loan obligations. Bankman-Fried directed FTX to divert billions more in customer assets to Alameda to ensure that Alameda maintained its lending relationships, and that money could continue to flow in from lenders and other investors.
5. But Bankman-Fried did not stop there. Even as it was increasingly clear that Alameda and FTX could not make customers whole, Bankman-Fried continued to misappropriate FTX customer funds. Through the summer of 2022, he directed hundreds of millions more in FTX customer funds to Alameda, which he then used for additional venture investments and for “loans” to himself and other FTX executives. All the while, he continued to make misleading statements to investors about FTX’s financial condition and risk management. Even in November 2022, faced with billions of dollars in customer withdrawal demands that FTX could not fulfill, Bankman-Fried misled investors from whom he needed money to plug a multi-billion-dollar hole. His brazen, multi-year scheme finally came to an end when FTX, Alameda, and their tangled web of affiliated entities filed for bankruptcy on November 11, 2022.
The first thing to note in the rap sheet is the date, “From at least May 2019 . . .”, by which the SEC means FTX’s entire existence. It was around May 2019 that SBF bought the FTX.com domain and the first fundraising announcement didn’t drop until August of that year.
Additionally SEC Chair Gary Gensler, warned:
“The alleged fraud committed by Mr. Bankman-Fried is a clarion call to crypto platforms that they need to come into compliance with our laws.”
Grewal said the charges will be filed publicly “tomorrow” on Dec. 14 at the Southern District of New York.
December 13, 2022 at 06:51AM BREAKING: Police Violently Assault and Arrest Indigenous Protest Leader Sererê in Brazil – His Wife Begs Authorities for Assistance! Protesters Surround Police Station! – VIDEO
To our readers: The international corporate media refuses to report on the massive uprising of millions in Brazil against the fraudulent presidential elections held at the end of October. The globalist press has decided that Bolsonaro must go, just like they decided that President Donald Trump must go.
The people of Brazil disagree. MILLIONS of protesters have taken to the streets of every major city for over 40 straight days.
On Monday night Indigenous Brazilian protest leader Cacique Sererê was violently assaulted and then taken away by police. Sererê has been leading protests against the communist takeover of the country.
Keep your eyes on Brazil. Prayers for its people.
Indigenous Brazilian protest leader Sererê was arrested on Monday night at the Alvorada Palace in Brazilia.
The arrest took place after the communist Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes called for his arrest.
According to reports, Sererê was knocked out and dragged away by police officers.
• Xavante indigenous leader, Sererê, made a request for arrest against Alexandre de Moraes (STF) for abuse of authority. Sererê became a symbol of movements against president-elect Lula (PT);
• On tonight (December 12, 2022), Sererê was approached by the police, physically attacked and taken unconscious to the Federal Police bulding;
• Protesters mobilized en masse to stand in front of the building and are revolting against the aggression and arrest of the indigenous man, causing a dispute between protesters and police.
• Indigenous peoples are protected by justice and cannot be arrested or detained for a crime that is not heinous.
The night will be long.
Serere’s wife called on authorities to save her husband!
December 12, 2022 at 06:49AM The World Health Organization, Johns Hopkins, and Bill Gates Just Conducted Another Pandemic Simulation — This Time The Virus Is Deadlier And Targets Children
Bill Gates at the Catastrophic Contagion Conference in Belgium.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security partnered with the World Health Organization and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to conduct “Catastrophic Contagion,” an exercise to simulate a global pandemic that is deadlier than the coronovirus and especially dangerous for children.
Bill Gates was in attendance.
The group conducted Catastrophic Contagion in Brussels, Belgium on October 23, 2022.
During the simulation, the World Health Organization’s health advisory board addressed a fictional “Severe Epidemic Enterovirus Respiratory Syndrome” pandemic that originates in Brazil and disseminates across the globe.
The exercise simulated a series of WHO emergency health advisory board meetings addressing a fictional pandemic set in the near future.
According to RXList, enteroviruses, including hepatitis A and polio, are comprised of RNA, enter the body through the gastrointestinal tract and attack the nervous system.
The pandemic simulation also included pre-recorded news broadcasts and live briefings from health officials. This is similar to earlier simulations.
A pundit named Jeanne Meserve of GNN, a fictional news outlet, is seen in footage during the pandemic simulation announcing the high death toll, particularly among children, from a pandemic that would have been prevented if countries adopted pandemic operational drills and adhered to the WHO’s pandemic guidances.
“As of today, there have been an estimated 1 billion cases worldwide with more than 20 million deaths, including nearly 15 million children. Countless millions are alive, but left with paralysis or brain damage,” Meserve notes.
“The most successful countries are those which invested in preparedness and trained for this moment years in advance,” she continues. “This included having full-time pandemic preparedness and response teams which conducted detailed operational planning and routinely tested those plans through exercises and drills. If more countries had participated and heeded the guidance the toll might have been much less.”
Bill Gates and senior public health officials from Angola, Germany, India, Liberia, Nigeria and Rwanda moderated discussions during the simulation.
Just months before the Covid-19 outbreak, the same world elites that conducted “Severe Epidemic Enterovirus Respiratory Syndrome 2025” held a similar exercise on October 18, 2019, dubbed “Event 201.”
During the high-level pandemic exercise, the John Hopkins Center for Health Security, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation simulated a global coronavirus pandemic that transmitted from bats to pigs to humans, a blueprint for what subsequently transpired with the coronavirus outbreak. The simulation also demonstrated a coordinated global response to the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the John Hopkins Center for Health Security website, “Event 201 was a 3.5-hour pandemic tabletop exercise that simulated a series of dramatic, scenario-based facilitated discussions, confronting difficult, true-to-life dilemmas associated with response to a hypothetical, but scientifically plausible, pandemic. 15 global business, government, and public health leaders were players in the simulation exercise that highlighted unresolved real-world policy and economic issues that could be solved with sufficient political will, financial investment, and attention now and in the future.”
Executives from pharmaceutical companies Johnson & Johnson and Merck, as well as the executive director of the Bill Gates-controlled Global Fund and the president of the UPS Foundation, were featured at the event conducted just months before the coronavirus started making global headlines.
John Hopkins Center for Health Security posted several videos on its YouTube channel from the simulation, “Event 201, A Global Pandemic Exercise”
John Hopkins also conducted SPARS 2025-2028, another pandemic exercise that examined the global pandemic response to a virus that spread from the Philippines to St. Paul Minnesota, in 2017.
December 9, 2022 at 06:20AM Russia Releases 1st Footage Of Griner, Bout Prisoner Swap
Update(1608ET): Russian state media has released footage of a moment the Biden administration would probably rather have remained hidden from public view.
TASS released the footage Thursday afternoon, in which Brittney Griner, seen below wearing a red jacket, and Viktor Bout crossed paths on a UAE airport tarmac, both on their way to freedom. Each was handed over to their respected countries’ officials, and the groups quickly walked the opposition directions into awaiting aircraft.
In releasing the footage, Moscow appears to be celebrating a ‘victory’ of sorts over chief rival and adversary the United States. Illustrating this, prominent Russian MP and media personality Maria Butina (the same person had in 2018 been convicted by the US, and later booted from the country, for acting as a unregistered foreign agent) had this to say in a state media interview:
“Russia was pushing hard and that means that we have a very strong position in the world that the United States can’t resist.”
Additionally, Russia’s Foreign Ministry issued the following statement: “Washington categorically refused to discuss including the Russian national in the exchange scheme. Nevertheless, the Russian Federation continued to actively work on rescuing our compatriot.”
More footage was made public by the Russian side depicting some of the lead-up to Griner’s release. It also showed Viktor Bout aboard a Russian aircraft enjoying his first moments of freedom after serving 11 years of a 25-year term.
Meanwhile, there’s a growing body of evidence strongly suggesting the White House had a chance to get ex-Marine Paul Whelon out of Russian prison, despite the administration’s current denials of this.
That’s one happy arms dealer…
It appears that in the end, the “celebrity” influence and greater PR surrounding appeals for Griner won out in the end, and the administration chose her, despite that she fully confessed to violating Russian law by bringing the cannabis vape cartridges into the country following her arrest last February.
She had been handed a harsh 9-year prison sentence, to be carried out at a remote, notorious penal colony. But now she is returning home to her family.
And then there’s this…
For a review of who ‘Lord of War’ Viktor Bout is, see below:
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Update(1228ET): The Daily Mail is calling it a “deal soaked in blood” after the governments of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Russia confirmed that Brittney Griner’s release for notorious convicted arms trafficker Viktor Bout came via Saudi/UAE mediation efforts led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS). Foreign ministry statements by both countries, hours after the now freed American and Russian walked past each other on a UAE airport tarmac, revealed the following per a leading Mideast regional news outlet:
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed led mediation efforts that secured the release of two prisoners between the US and Russia, a joint statement issued by both countries’ foreign ministries said on Thursday.
“The ministries said the success of the mediation efforts was a reflection of the mutual and solid friendship between their two countries and the United States and Russia,” the statement said.
A senior administration official would not comment directly on MBS’s role but said the U.S. will ‘continue to lean on partners around the world’ to secure the release of unjustly detailed Americans.
The swap happened at Abu Dhabi airport, where Griner and Bout had to walked past each other to reach their respective parties on the airport tarmac, Russian state media reports.
The official said Griner was ‘all smiles’ on the tarmac as she approached the American delegation.
Amid the outrage that the Biden administration released a “big catch” notorious Russian criminal, also while leaving Paul Whelan behind to languish in a Russian penal colony, many are questioning the timing of all of this coming together a meretwo days after the US government dropped the Khashoggi lawsuit against the Saudi leader.
To review of the timeline and chain of possibly connected events, Biden recently gave MbS immunity for the Jamal Khashoggi murder ironically enough at a moment MbS was pushing production cuts through OPEC (which helped Putin and Russian interests)… and now the White House gets Griner back (and perhaps it will quickly be “forgotten” how the Saudis just humiliated the US administration on oil output).
* * *
Update(8:50ET): During his announcement from the White House, with Griner’s family present, Biden spent a lot of time defending his administration from widespread accusations that Griner’s release was prioritized because of her fame while at the same time other detained Americans were left behind.
“This was not a choice of which American to bring home,” Biden said while vowing to continue working on freeing detained US Marine veteran Paul Whelan. 61-year old teacher Marc Fogel is also languishing in Russian prison.
An understandably very frustrated and “devastated” Whelan family has issued the following statement upon the White House announcement of Griner’s release:
Despite the possibility that there might be an exchange without Paul, our family is still devastated. I can’t even fathom how Paul will feel when he learns. Paul has worked so hard to survive nearly 4 years of this injustice. His hopes had soared with the knowledge that the US government was taking concrete steps for once towards his release. He’d been worrying about where he’d live when he got back to the US. And now what? How do you continue to survive, day after day, when you know that your government has failed twice to free you from a foreign prison? I can’t imagine he retains any hope that a government will negotiate his freedom at this point. It’s clear that the US government has no concessions that the Russian government will take for Paul Whelan. And so Paul will remain a prisoner until that changes.
* * *
In a huge and unexpected development, Russia has released into US custody WNBA star Brittney Griner, after in October her 9-year prison sentence was upheld by a Russian court. She had already spent weeks in a harsh penal colony some 300 miles southeast of Moscow.
She was freed in a prisoner exchange which took place in Abu Dhabi Airport on Thursday. In return the Biden administration agreed to give up notorious international arms dealer Viktor Bout. US officials speaking to CBS say the deal had been reached by last Thursday, with the logistics details having been hammered out since then. Biden is imminently expected to address Griner’s release and the prisoner exchange at 8:30eastern. Watch Live:
“To secure Griner’s release, the president ordered Bout to be freed and returned to Russia. Mr. Biden signed the commutation order cutting short Bout’s 25-year federal prison sentence,” CBS reports.
But the report underscores, “Notably, the Griner-for-Bout exchange leaves retired U.S. Marine Paul Whelan imprisoned in Russia. Whelan has been in Russian custody for nearly four years. He was convicted on espionage charges that the U.S. has called false.”
When Russian state media began first signaling that the Kremlin will pursue getting Bout back, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken starting over the summer hinted the administration was actually entertaining the possibility, it unleased a wave of controversy, especially given Griner’s own recent public displays which some interepreted as “anti-US”… most notably refusing to stand for the national anthem and even staying in the locker room during its playing.
One commenter previously had this to say in summary of the controversial exchange for Bout:
“It took nearly 10 years for US to apprehend Viktor Bout, and close to 3 more years to convict him for terrorism and arms trafficking. Allegedly, thousands of civilians in multiple African countries, were injured and killed by weapons supplied by Bout. Fair trade for Griner?”
It’s likely that the Department of Justice had been vigorously arguing against releasing Viktor Bout, considering it took a significant extradition process (from Thailand) to even get him into US custody over a decade ago.
Before his just-announced release, he was serving a 25-year sentence in federal prison after being convicted in the Southern District of New York for conspiring to kill Americans and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.
Getty Images
Already there’s brewing anger that Paul Whelan, as well as another American locked up in Russia, 61-year old teacher Marc Fogel, over the widespread perception that they’ve been left behind.
