Category: Corruption

  • Feds see American anger over Trump raid, insecure border as posing increased terror threat

    Feds see American anger over Trump raid, insecure border as posing increased terror threat

    August 15, 2022 at 06:42AM Feds see American anger over Trump raid, insecure border as posing increased terror threat

    Americans angry about the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Florida estate and insecurity at the southern border pose an increased risk of domestic terrorism, the Biden administration warned in a series of bulletins sent to federal and local law enforcement over the weekend.

    The warnings from the Justice Department, the Homeland Security Department, the FBI and Customs and Border Protection used nearly identical language and were issued after one man tried to attack an FBI office in Cincinnati and a driver crashed into a barrier with his car on fire at the U.S. Capitol before committing suicide.

    “Last night, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice issued a Joint Intelligence Bulletin, accessible via the Homeland Security Information Network, providing information on the potential for domestic violent extremists to carry out attacks on federal, state, and local law enforcement and government personnel or facilities,” CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus wrote in a memo to 60,000 employees.

    The warnings were being “shared in light of an increase in threats and acts of violence, including armed encounters, against law enforcement, judiciary, and government personnel, in reaction to the FBI’s recent execution of a court authorized search warrant in Palm Beach, Florida,” Magnus wrote. “Since the search, the FBI and DHS have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities.”

    A senior law enforcement official told Just the News that some federal police agencies were asked last week to monitor social media accounts of known political influencers for signs of agitation and FBI officials reached out to some social media platforms frequented by conservatives in the aftermath of Cincinnati attack, in which the perpetrator was killed.

    Most of the warnings cited the Aug. 8 FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound as a possible motivation for violence. Some, like Magnus’ memo, also mentioned concerns about illegal immigration, suggesting such concerns weren’t warranted even though scores of members of Congress have expressed concern about border security under President Biden, officials said.

    “As described in the June 7 National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin, some domestic violent extremists have expressed grievances related to the false perception that the U.S. government is not working to maintain security along the U.S.-Mexico border,” Magnus wrote. “And there remains increased risk of domestic violent extremists relying on these grievances to justify violence against law enforcement officials involved in the enforcement of border security.”

    The memos said they had no specific or credible threats but urged federal and local law enforcement to use heightened awareness.

    “Out of an abundance of caution and to ensure the safety of our workforce and the security of federal facilities, we are encouraging you to remain vigilant and aware of your surroundings and to exercise caution as you go about your daily routine,” one memo said.

    via Just The News

  • An informer told the FBI what documents Trump was hiding, and where

    An informer told the FBI what documents Trump was hiding, and where

    August 10, 2022 at 05:15PM Exclusive: An informer told the FBI what documents Trump was hiding, and where

    The raid on Mar-a-Lago was based largely on information from an FBI confidential human source, one who was able to identify what classified documents former President Trump was still hiding and even the location of those documents, two senior government officials told Newsweek.

    The officials, who have direct knowledge of the FBI’s deliberations and were granted anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters, said the raid of Donald Trump‘s Florida residence was deliberately timed to occur when the former president was away.

    A confidential informer told the FBI what documents Donald Trump was hiding at Mar-a-Lago, and where. The former president at a rally on August 05, 2022 in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
    Scott Olson/Getty Images

    FBI decision-makers in Washington and Miami thought that denying the former president a photo opportunity or a platform from which to grandstand (or to attempt to thwart the raid) would lower the profile of the event, says one of the sources, a senior Justice Department official who is a 30-year veteran of the FBI.

    The effort to keep the raid low-key failed: instead, it prompted a furious response from GOP leaders and Trump supporters. “What a spectacular backfire,” says the Justice official.

    “I know that there is much speculation out there that this is political persecution, but it is really the best and the worst of the bureaucracy in action,” the official says. “They wanted to punctuate the fact that this was a routine law enforcement action, stripped of any political overtones, and yet [they] got exactly the opposite.”

    Both senior government officials say the raid was scheduled with no political motive, the FBI solely intent on recovering highly classified documents that were illegally removed from the White House. Preparations to conduct such an operation began weeks ago, but in planning the date and time, the FBI Miami Field Office and Washington headquarters were focused on the former president’s scheduled return to Florida from his residences in New York and New Jersey.

    “They were seeking to avoid any media circus,” says the second source, a senior intelligence official who was briefed on the investigation and the operation. “So even though everything made sense bureaucratically and the FBI feared that the documents might be destroyed, they also created the very firestorm they sought to avoid, in ignoring the fallout.”

    A “Florida For Trump” flag being displayed outside Mar-a-Lago following the FBI search.
    Eva Marie Uzcategui/GETTY

    On Monday at about 10 a.m. EST, two dozen FBI agents and technicians showed up at Donald Trump’s Florida home to execute a search warrant to obtain any government-owned documents that might be in the possession of Trump but are required to be delivered to the Archives under the provisions of the 1978 Presidential Records Act. (In response to the Hillary Clinton email scandal, Trump himself signed a law in 2018 that made it a felony to remove and retain classified documents.)

    The act establishes that presidential records are the property of the U.S. government and not a president’s private property. Put in place after Watergate to avoid the abuses of the Nixon administration, the law imposes strict penalties for failure to comply. “Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined” $2,000, up to three years in prison or “shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.”

    The act, and concerns about the illegal possession of classified “national defense information” are the bases for the search warrant, according to the two sources. The raid had nothing to do with the January 6 investigation or any other alleged wrongdoing by the former president.

    The road to the raid began a year-and-a-half ago, when in the transition from the Trump administration to that of President Joe Biden, there were immediate questions raised by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as to whether the presidential records turned over to the federal agency for historical preservation were complete or not.

    In February, Archivist David Ferriero testified before Congress that his agency began talking with Trump’s people right after they left office and that the Trump camp had already returned 15 boxes of documents to the Archives. Ferriero said that in those materials, the Archives discovered items “marked as classified national security information,” unleashing further inquiries as to whether Trump continued to possess classified material.

    The basic outlines of the facts surrounding this timeline have been confirmed by the former president. He has previously said that he was returning any official records to the Archives, labeling any confusion in the matter as “an ordinary and routine process to ensure the preservation of my legacy and in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.” He also claimed the Archives “did not ‘find’ anything” in what he had already been returned, suggesting that there was nothing sensitive. He said the documents had inadvertently shipped to Florida during the six-hour transition period in which his belongings were moved.

    According to the Justice Department source, the Archives saw things differently, believing that the former White House was stonewalling and continued to possess unauthorized material. Earlier this year, they asked the Justice Department to investigate.

    In late April, the source says, a federal grand jury began deliberating whether there was a violation of the Presidential Records Act or whether President Trump unlawfully possessed national security information. Through the grand jury process, the National Archives provided federal prosecutors with copies of the documents received from former President Trump in January 2022. The grand jury concluded that there had been a violation of the law, according to the Justice Department source.

    In the past week, the prosecutor in the case and local Assistant U.S. Attorney went to Florida magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart in West Palm Beach to seek approval for the search of Donald Trump’s private residence. The affidavit to obtain the search warrant, the intelligence source says, contained abundant and persuasive detail that Trump continued to possess the relevant records in violation of federal law, and that investigators had sufficient information to prove that those records were located at Mar-a-Lago—including the detail that they were contained in a specific safe in a specific room.

    “In order for the investigators to convince the Florida judge to approve such an unprecedented raid, the information had to be solid, which the FBI claimed,” says the intelligence source.

    According to experts familiar with FBI practices, Judge Reinhart reviewed the prosecutor’s evidence and asked numerous questions about the sources and the urgency. The judge signed a search warrant allowing the FBI to look for relevant material and the FBI then planned the operation, wanting to conduct the raid while Trump was spending time at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. A Secret Service source who spoke on background said the Secret Service director was given advance warning and was later told the specifics of the raid.

    Because the Secret Service is still responsible for protecting the former president, his family, and his property, the FBI had to coordinate with the Secret Service to gain access to the grounds.

    A convoy of unmarked black SUVs and a Ryder rental truck filled with about three dozen FBI special agents and technicians entered the gates in the early evening. Heavily armed Secret Service agents were also visibly present at the gates. The Palm Beach Police Department was also present at the scene.

    The entire operation was conducted relatively stealthily. No FBI people were seen in their iconic blue windbreakers announcing the presence of the Bureau. And though local law enforcement was present, the Palm Beach Police Department was careful to tweet on Tuesday that it “was not aware of the existence of a search warrant nor did our department assist the FBI in the execution of a search warrant.”

    According to news reports, some 10-15 boxes of documents were removed from the premises. Donald Trump said in a statement that the FBI opened his personal safe as part of their search. Trump attorney Lindsey Halligan, who was present during the multi-hour search, says that the FBI targeted three rooms—a bedroom, an office and a storage room. That suggests that the FBI knew specifically where to look.

    “This unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” former President Trump said in a statement. He called the raid “prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024.”

    Though Trump and his Republican Party allies are portraying the raid as politically motivated, it is likely the unprecedented nature of the raid on the property of a former president will have the greatest reverberation. Even Trump’s political rivals have rallied in condemning the FBI.

    Former Vice President Mike Pence tweeted that “no former President of the United States has ever been subject to a raid of their personal residence in American history.” Mike Pompeo, Trump’s Secretary of State and CIA director, tweeted that Attorney General Merrick Garland “must explain why 250 yrs of practice was upended w/ this raid. I served on Benghazi Com[mittee] where we proved Hillary possessed classified info. We didn’t raid her home.”

    The Biden White House says the president was not briefed about the Mar-a-Lago raid and knew nothing about it in advance. “The Justice Department conducts investigations independently and we leave any law enforcement matters to them,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday afternoon. “It would not be appropriate for us to comment on any ongoing investigations.”

    As U.S. President Joe Biden, appearing via teleconference, looks on, Attorney General Merrick Garland attends a meeting of the Task Force on Reproductive Healthcare Access during an event at the White House complex August 3, 2022 in Washington, DC.
    Win McNamee/Getty Images

    The senior Justice Department source says that Garland was regularly briefed on the Records Act investigation, and that he knew about the grand jury and what material federal prosecutors were seeking. He insists, though, that Garland had no prior knowledge of the date and time of the specific raid, nor was he asked to approve it. “I know it’s hard for people to believe,” says the official, “but this was a matter for the U.S. Attorney and the FBI.”

    FBI director Christopher Wray ultimately gave his go-ahead to conduct the raid, the senior Justice official says. “It really is a case of the Bureau misreading the impact.”

    via Newsweek

  • FBI Sabotaged Hunter Biden Evidence To Derail Investigation: Whistleblowers

    FBI Sabotaged Hunter Biden Evidence To Derail Investigation: Whistleblowers

    July 26, 2022 at 06:43AM FBI Sabotaged Hunter Biden Evidence To Derail Investigation: Whistleblowers

    Several FBI whistleblowers say that the agency’s probe into Hunter Biden was internally sabotaged during the 2020 election in order to derail the investigation, after agents wrongfully deemed verified evidence as “disinformation” to ignore.

    According to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), agents investigating Hunter “opened an assessment which was used by an FBI headquarters team to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation and caused investigative activity to cease,” adding that his office received “a significant number of protected communications from highly credible whistleblowers” regarding the investigation.

    Grassley added that “verified and verifiable derogatory information on Hunter Biden was falsely labeled as disinformation,” according to the Washington Examiner.

    FBI supervisory intelligence agent Brian Auten opened in August 2020 the assessment that was later used by the agency, according to the disclosures. One of the whistleblowers claimed the FBI assistant special agent in charge of the Washington field office, Timothy Thibault, shut down a line of inquiry into Hunter Biden in October 2020 despite some of the details being known to be true at the time.

    A whistleblower also said Thibault “ordered closed” an “avenue of additional derogatory Hunter Biden reporting,” according to Grassley, even though “all of the reporting was either verified or verifiable via criminal search warrants.” The senator said Thibault “ordered the matter closed without providing a valid reason as required” and that FBI officials “subsequently attempted to improperly mark the matter in FBI systems so that it could not be opened in the future,” according to the disclosures. 

    The whistleblowers say investigators from FBI headquarters were “in communication with FBI agents responsible for the Hunter Biden information targeted by Mr. Auten’s assessment,” and that their findings on whether the claims were in fact disinformation were placed “in a restricted access sub-file” in September 2020, according to Grassley, who added that the disclosures “appear to indicate that there was a scheme in place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation.“

    Grassley summarized the new allegations in a Monday letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

    The Examiner notes that FBI agent Auten was involved in the Trump-Russia investigation, including interviewing Christopher Steele’s primary source, Igor Danchenko.

    According to Grassley, the “volume and consistency” of the allegations regarding the handling of the Hunter Biden probe “substantiate their credibility.”

    The assessment by Auten in August 2020 was opened the same month Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) received a briefing from the FBI “that purportedly related to our Biden investigation and a briefing for which the contents were later leaked in order to paint the investigation in a false light,” Grassley said. The senator said Senate Democrats asked for a briefing in July 2020 “from the very same FBI HQ team that discredited the derogatory Hunter Biden information.”

    The FBI inquiry into Hunter Biden reportedly began as a tax investigation, then expanded into a scrutiny of potential money-laundering and foreign lobbying; the DOJ has declined to hand over investigative details. -Washington Examiner

    Thibault, the FBI agent who allegedly quashed the Hunter probe, may have violated the Hatch act in 2020 after making posts on social media which were critical of then-president Donald Trump and former AG William Barr.

    Also notable – Hunter had the numbers of several FBI agents in his iCloud contacts.

    Joe Biden, top Democrats, and virtually the entire mainstream media dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian disinformation when bombshell allegations from the New York Post emerged weeks before the 2020 election. In March 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report claiming that figures tied to Russian intelligence promoted “misleading or unsubstantiated allegations” about Joe Biden.

    Grassley to Garland and Wra… by Washington Examiner

    via Infowars https://ift.tt/dITHz6J

  • 4chan users claim to have hacked Hunter Biden’s iCloud account

    4chan users claim to have hacked Hunter Biden’s iCloud account

    July 10, 2022 at 11:22PM 4chan users claim to have hacked Hunter Biden’s iCloud account


    The contents of Hunter Biden’s iCloud account have allegedly been hacked by users of the 4chan community, where screenshots purporting to be from his phone and computer were being posted on their main political forum late Saturday night.
    Administrators on the imageboard site moved quickly in the hours after the content was posted to pull down threads that included materials from the alleged leak, leaving many on the site, which is known for featuring some of the most salacious subject matter on the internet, furious.

    The content from the leak could not immediately be verified by the Washington Examiner, and a White House representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    It was also not immediately clear if the contents of the 4chan leak included any materials from the younger Biden’s infamous laptop, which the Washington Examiner verified the authenticity of earlier this year.

    The Washington Examiner was able to confirm the legitimacy of the laptop after obtaining a copy of the first son’s hard drive and having it examined by a former Secret Service agent who has testified as a cyberforensics expert in over 100 classified, criminal, and civil matters at the state, federal, and international levels.

    Konstantinos “Gus” Dimitrelos conducted a full forensic examination to determine the drive’s authenticity and whether there were any signs of tampering. Using a technique he developed called “digital sandwiching,” Dimitrelos cross-referenced thousands of emails, documents, business records, text messages, Apple Notes, photos, geolocation data, travel records, and other information on the drive to conclude that Biden is the only person capable of producing the data.

    “My analysis revealed there is a 100% certainty that Robert Hunter Biden was the only person responsible for the activity on this hard drive and all of its stored data,” Dimitrelos told the Washington Examiner in May. “Hunter Biden’s MacBook Pro was not hacked, and the data contained on the hard drive is authentic. Based on the data I examined, there was no manipulation of any photographs, emails, documents, or other user activities.”

    Records on the drive reviewed by Dimitrelos show Hunter Biden’s iCloud account was syncing his personal data with his MacBook Pro, iPhone, and iPad when the computer was last used in March 2019. Other records show Hunter Biden’s Apple ID account, which is used to sign in to all Apple services, has been associated with 46 different devices since 2011, including over 20 iPhones, eight Mac computers, nine iPads, and three Apple TVs, Dimitrelos said.

    It is not clear if this latest leak, which purports to be of the younger Biden’s iCloud, is from the same account connected to the hard drive that was verified by the Washington Examiner.

    via MSN

  • Joe Biden Covered Hunter’s Russia-Linked Hooker Tab; Leaked Audio Proves Joe Spoke Of Dealings

    Joe Biden Covered Hunter’s Russia-Linked Hooker Tab; Leaked Audio Proves Joe Spoke Of Dealings

     

    Joe Biden Covered Hunter’s Russia-Linked Hooker Tab; Leaked Audio Proves Joe Spoke Of Dealings

     

    President Joe Biden inadvertently paid son Hunter’s tab to a Russia-linked escort ring, the Washington Examiner reports, citing records from the first son’s infamous laptop.

    After Hunter spent more than $30,000 on prostitutes between November 2018 and March 2019 – including several who use “.ru” email addresses linked to Russia, and an “exclusive model agency,” UberGFE, Joe wired $5,000 while Hunter was “actively engaged” with an escort.

     

    Hunter Biden disclosed in text messages with a woman named Eva, the go-between who served as his primary point of contact for UberGFE, that his accounts were temporarily frozen at one point because his attempted payments to her “girls” with Russian email accounts were too much of a “red flag” for his bank. Eva refers to him as Robert in the messages, which is his birth name. -Washington Examiner

    Hunter also convinced Joe to send $20,000 more, claiming it was to pay for drug rehab in New York, but which never actually happened.

    The Examiner notes that there’s no suggestion that Joe knew what Hunter was spending the money on.

    “What’s wrong with you,” Hunter asked the Examiner just after the above story was published.

    According to a 2020 GOP Senate report, “Hunter Biden paid nonresident women who were nationals of Russia or other Eastern European countries,” and that certain transactions were linked to what “appears to be an Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring.”

    The report says that Hunter “sent thousands of dollars” to individuals who were either involved in “transactions consistent with possible human trafficking” or “potential association with prostitution.”

     

    Some of Hunter’s hookers “subsequently wired funds they have received from Hunter Biden to individuals located in Russia and Ukraine.”

    In one instance, a prostitute named Eva told Hunter that he owed a total of $9,500 for 16 hours of ‘work’ – telling him to wire the funds directly to a bank account linked to a woman with a Russian email address. Less than 90 minutes later, “Joseph R. Biden Jr.” sent him $5,000 through Cash App, after which Joe Biden’s former assistant texted Hunter to say that the amount was the maximum amount allowed because the “weekly limit is $7,500.”

    Many of the previously unreported records cited in this story, including Hunter Biden’s communications with his father, were located in a password-protected iPhone XS backup found on a copy of his abandoned laptop. The iPhone was saved to Hunter Biden’s computer on Feb. 6, 2019. Konstantinos “Gus” Dimitrelos, a cyber forensics expert commissioned by the Washington Examiner, located the password to the iPhone backup during his examination of the hard drive.

    In one instance, Joe Biden wired his son $5,000 less than three hours before he filmed a dispute with an escort over a $10,000 payment at a cottage in Boston, Massachusetts. -Washington Examiner

    According to Hunter’s search history, he was looking for “dc Russian escorts,” and visited the UberGFE website to browse for hookers.

     

    Screenshot

     

    Hunter is currently under federal investigation for possible tax fraud linked to his overseas business dealings.

    Speaking of which, the Daily Mail has leaked December 2018 audio of Joe Biden telling Hunter he wanted to talk to him after the New York Times dropped a story on Hunter’s dealings with Chinese oil company CEFC.

     

    The president has repeatedly denied personally and through his press secretary that he ever talked about Hunter’s foreign business with his Hunter – despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

    Now, in a voicemail left on Hunter’s iPhone, the evidence has come from POTUS’ own mouth.

    Joe called Hunter on December 12, 2018 saying that he wanted to talk to him after reading a New York Times story about Hunter’s dealings with the Chinese oil giant CEFC. -Daily Mail

    Files on Hunter’s laptop reveal that he leveraged his family name to strike a deal with CEFC for millions of dollars.

    According to the Times story, CEFC chairman Ye Jianming was arrested in China, while his #2 Patrick Ho had been convicted in the US for bribing African officials in order to help Iran evade oil sanctions.

    Ye met with Hunter in 2017 in a Miami hotel to discuss “a partnership to invest in American infrastructure and energy deals.”

    According to the leaked Audio, Joe says in a voicemail to Hunter; “Hey pal, it’s Dad. It’s 8:15 on Wednesday night. If you get a chance just give me a call. Nothing urgent. I just wanted to talk to you,” adding “I thought the article released online, it’s going to be printed tomorrow in the Times, was good. I think you’re clear. And anyway if you get a chance give me a call, I love you.”

     

    And of course, none of this is apparently newsworthy according to the same networks that provided 24-7 coverage of the Trump children’s nothingburger “gotchas.”

    via Zerohedge

    June 29, 2022 at 06:43AM

  • Obama Approved Accusing Russia of DNC Hack Before FBI Received DNC Server Images

    Obama Approved Accusing Russia of DNC Hack Before FBI Received DNC Server Images

    June 8, 2022 at 06:12AM Obama Approved Accusing Russia of DNC Hack Before FBI Received DNC Server Images

    President Barack Obama approved a statement by the U.S. intelligence community in October 2016 accusing Russia of stealing emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), despite the U.S. government not having obtained the DNC server images crucial to ascertaining whether Moscow was involved in the theft.

    FBI emails recently made public during the trial against now-acquitted DNC attorney Michael Sussmann show the bureau was still in the process of requesting images of the DNC servers on Oct. 13, 2016. The server images, which are equivalent to a virtual copy of the alleged crime scene, were taken by private cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

    On Oct. 7, six days before CrowdStrike agreed to mail the server images to the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a statement accusing Russia of hacking U.S. political organizations and disseminating emails allegedly stolen through the hack. The statement was approved and encouraged by Obama, according to then-DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson.

    “The president approved the statement. I know he wanted us to make the statement. So that was very definitely a statement by the United States government, not just Jim Clapper and me,” Johnson told the House Intelligence Committee in June 2017, referring to then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

    The DHS, ODNI, and the office of Barack Obama didn’t respond to requests for comment.

    The Oct. 7, 2016, statement said that the U.S. intelligence community, which is composed of more than a dozen agencies including the FBI, was “confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.”

    “The recent disclosures of alleged hacked emails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts,” the statement said.

    The lack of server images at the time the statement was released highlights the question of what the intelligence community used to establish Russia’s involvement.

    On Aug. 31, 2016, CrowdStrike provided a report on the DNC hack to the FBI. The FBI special agent who reviewed the report called it “heavily redacted,” according to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the Russia investigation. FBI Assistant Director James Trainor was so frustrated with the redactions that “he doubted its completeness because he knew that outside counsel had reviewed it.”

    The “outside counsel” the report referred to was all but certainly Sussmann, who served as the DNC’s point of contact for all intrusion-related matters. He was acquitted last month of one charge of lying to the FBI about whether he was representing the DNC when he took a white paper to the FBI that alleged a connection between then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russia. The FBI agents who reviewed the paper found the claims in it unfounded within 24 hours.

    On Sept. 30, 2016, one week before the release of the statement accusing Russia of the hack, the FBI was still seeking copies of the CrowdStrike reports without the redactions. That day, FBI agent Adrian Hawkins listed copies of the unredacted CrowdStrike reports as the No. 1 priority request to the DNC, according to another email made public as a trial exhibit in the Sussman case.

    The FBI never received the unredacted reports, according to a government court filing in the case against Roger Stone. According to the filing, lawyers for the DNC told prosecutors that “no redacted information” in the CrowdStrike reports “concerned the attribution of the attack to Russian actors.”

    Special counsel Robert Mueller alleged that the hack of the DNC during which emails were stolen took place on or around May 25 to June 1, 2016. That time frame is significant because CrowdStrike has since told The Epoch Times that the DNC systems were not hacked during that time frame. Crowdstrike had deployed 200 sensors and other counter-intrusion technologies on the committee’s network within the first week of its engagement, which began on May 1, 2016.

    “There is no indication of any subsequent breaches taking place on the DNC’s corporate network or any machines protected by CrowdStrike Falcon,” the company told The Epoch Times in August 2020.

    CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry, who was in charge of the firm’s work on the DNC intrusion, has told congressional investigators that his company didn’t have concrete evidence that emails had been stolen from the DNC.

    “We have indicators that data was exfiltrated. We did not have concrete evidence that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated,” Henry told lawmakers on Dec. 5, 2017.

    The alleged hacking of the DNC along with the subsequent release of the committee’s emails was the nexus of allegations of collusion with Russia that plagued the administration of President Donald Trump.

    via www.theepochtimes.com https://ift.tt/ZCFvifp

  • Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Texas Social Media Anti-Censorship Law

    Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Texas Social Media Anti-Censorship Law

    June 1, 2022 at 07:07AM Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Texas Social Media Anti-Censorship Law

    The Supreme Court voted 5-4 late on May 31 to temporarily block a Texas law that prevents social media platforms from censoring users based on their political views.

    Known as HB 20, the state law makes it unlawful for tech platforms to restrict or remove content based on “the viewpoint of the user or another person” or “the viewpoint represented in the user’s expression.”

    The statute also requires the platforms to establish procedures users can use to appeal a platform’s decision to “remove content posted by the user.” The law applies to platforms that have more than 50 million active monthly users in the United States.

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed the bill in September 2021.

    The case is Netchoice v. Paxton, court file 21A720.

    The applicants are two trade associations representing big tech—Netchoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA). The respondent is Ken Paxton, a Republican who is the attorney general of Texas.

    Silicon Valley giants oppose the legislation, claiming it is unconstitutional.

    After the new ruling CCIA president Matt Schruers praised the order.

    “We are encouraged that this attack on First Amendment rights has been halted until a court can fully evaluate the repercussions of Texas’s ill-conceived statute,” he said in a statement.

    “This ruling means that private American companies will have an opportunity to be heard in court before they are forced to disseminate vile, abusive or extremist content under this Texas law.

    “We appreciate the Supreme Court ensuring First Amendment protections, including the right not to be compelled to speak, will be upheld during the legal challenge to Texas’s social media law,” Schruers said.

    “The Supreme Court noting the constitutional risks of this law is important not just for online companies and free speech, but for a key principle for democratic countries. No online platform, website, or newspaper should be directed by government officials to carry certain speech. This has been a key tenet of our democracy for more than 200 years and the Supreme Court has upheld that.”

    The emergency application was filed with the high court on May 13. The opinion was released at the end of the business day on May 31.

    The decision cut across the court’s ideological lines.

    Liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer joined with conservatives John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to slap a hold on the law. The five justices did not explain why they voted to approve the order.

    Conservative justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and liberal Elena Kagan voted against granting the order. Alito wrote a dissenting opinion (pdf) which Thomas and Gorsuch joined.

    Netchoice and CCIA characterized HB 20 in the application (pdf) as an attack on Silicon Valley companies.

    The statute “is an unprecedented assault on the editorial discretion of private websites [like Facebook.com, Instagram.com, Pinterest.com, Twitter.com, Vimeo.com, and YouTube.com] that would fundamentally transform their business models and services,” the document stated.

    “HB20 prohibits covered social media platforms [many of which are members of Applicants NetChoice and CCIA] from engaging in any viewpoint-based editorial discretion.

    “Thus, HB20 would compel platforms to disseminate all sorts of objectionable viewpoints—such as Russia’s propaganda claiming that its invasion of Ukraine is justified, ISIS propaganda claiming that extremism is warranted, neo-Nazi or KKK screeds denying or supporting the Holocaust, and encouraging children to engage in risky or unhealthy behavior like eating disorders.

    “HB20 also imposes related burdensome operational and disclosure requirements designed to chill the millions of expressive editorial choices that platforms make each day.”

    Alito rejected the social media platforms’ arguments in his dissent, saying whether the companies’ will ultimately win their case “under existing law is quite unclear.”

    “It is not at all obvious how our existing precedents, which predate the age of the internet, should apply to large social media companies,” the justice wrote.

    “This application concerns issues of great importance that will plainly merit this Court’s review. Social media platforms have transformed the way people communicate with each other and obtain news,” Alito wrote, referencing a Pew Research Center report from a year ago that stated that more eight out of 10 Americans obtain news from digital devices.

    Describing HB 20 as “a ground-breaking Texas law,” Alito wrote that it “addresses the power of dominant social media corporations to shape public discussion of the important issues of the day.”

    A federal district judge previously enjoined Texas from enforcing the law but a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reversed that order on May 11, as The Epoch Times reported.

    Attorneys representing Texas told the 5th Circuit that social media platforms “control the modern-day public square, but they abusively suppress speech in that square.”

    A federal judge blocked a similar Florida law, finding it unconstitutional.

    via www.theepochtimes.com

  • Biden Profiting Off MonkeyPox Vaccine He Just Purchased

    Biden Profiting Off MonkeyPox Vaccine He Just Purchased

    NATIONAL FILE: Fauci-Funded Monkeypox Vaccine Maker PAID Biden’s Host University For Clinical Trial of Monkeypox Vaccine

    The University of Pennsylvania, which hosts Joe Biden’s think tank the Penn Biden Center and paid Joe Biden in the lead-up to his run for president, got paid by the company Bavarian Nordic to perform a clinical trial on the Bavarian Nordic monkeypox vaccine. That’s right. Joe Biden’s host university profited from helping Bavarian Nordic develop the MVA-BN monkeypox vaccine, according to a University of Pennsylvania document obtained by NATIONAL FILE. The Penn Biden Center is financed by UPenn general funds. The MVA-BN vaccine tested at UPenn is now known in America as the Jynneos monkeypox vaccine.

    “The University of Pennsylvania is being paid by Bavarian Nordic,” the 2014 document states. Biden joined UPenn after leaving the vice presidency in 2017. Anthony Fauci used approximately $100 million in U.S. taxpayer funds to pay Bavarian Nordic for the vaccine and the Biden administration has used over $100 million in taxpayer funds to buy the monkeypox vaccines.

    As I also reported, the University of Pennsylvania makes massive money off Coronavirus vaccines. UPenn gets paid by Pfizer’s vaccine partner BioNtech in licensing payments for mRNA technology and UPenn even makes more money if Pfizer-BioNTech sells more vaccines and gets more FDA approvals from the Biden administration, thanks to a deal UPenn made in 2018 when Biden worked for the university.

    Here is the University of Pennsylvania document for the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania that invites people to participate in a research study called “Randomized, open-label Phase II trial to assess the safety and immunogenicity of MVA-BN® smallpox vaccine when increasing the number of injections compared to the standard regimen in immunocompromised subjects with HIV infection…”

    The document states that “The University of Pennsylvania is being paid by Bavarian Nordic, the sponsor of this trial who is also providing the material to conduct this research trial.”

    University of Pennsylvania financial documents obtained by NATIONAL FILE show that the UPenn fund that bankrolls Joe Biden’s think tank the Penn Biden Center makes money in “milestone payments” from the sale of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines and from FDA approvals of the injections. The University of Pennsylvania, which paid Joe Biden prior to his presidential run, was accepting big money from donors apparently to carve out spaces for foreign students at UPenn including from Communist China, and NATIONAL FILE can confirm that internal controversy and a staff shakeup occurred when staff questioned how international funds were being spent. With Joe Biden able to return to the Penn Biden Center after his presidency, Biden puts himself in a position to personally profit from the vaccines he is pushing. Pfizer-BioNTech is trying to get a new authorization for a child booster for 5 to 11 year olds.

    Under the watch of UPenn president Amy Gutmann, massive amounts of money have flowed into the university’s funds apparently to import students from around the world including from Communist China and the “People’s Republic of China” with administrator notes including “MAKE SURE STUDENT IS FROM CHINA…” Amy Gutmann, the UPenn president who oversaw the establishment of Joe Biden’s think tank the Penn Biden Center in 2018, is now Biden’s Ambassador to Germany. There were arguments in the UPenn administration about where the Chinese-oriented money and other foreign money was going. Some insiders questioned how funds for international students were being managed without transparency, and the arguments led to a staff overhaul. The controversy stemmed from funds set aside for international students.

    UPenn’s China links are numerous, as evidenced by its Center for the Study of Contemporary China and the Penn Wharton China Center. In 2019, UPenn’s foreign donations spiked approximately 389 percent.

    The Penn Biden Center is housed on the UPenn campus and in Washington, D.C. pulling funds directly from the general funds of the University of Pennsylvania, and Joe Biden or his surrogates can return to the Penn Biden Center after his presidency. Joe Biden’s think tank was previously managed by his current Secretary of State Tony Blinken. One donation specified “$25k each” in payment to UPenn in exchange for “Students from the People’s Republic of China admitted…”

    Documents obtained by NATIONAL FILE show that the University of Pennsylvania, which hosts and funds Joe Biden’s think tank called the Penn Biden Center, directly profits from the sale of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Coronavirus vaccines. The University gets more money if more vaccines are sold. The University of Pennsylvania also gets “milestone payments” when the Biden administration’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves a Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which represents a massive conflict of interest for Biden. BioNTech pays the University of Pennsylvania Board of Trustees directly, and the university is protected from civil liability if people try to sue for “bodily injury” or “death” caused by BioNTech vaccines.

    BioNTech signed a licensing agreement in 2018 with the University of Pennsylvania, which directly funds the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. Even though Coronavirus had not yet leaked out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology when the deal was made, the 2018 agreement ensured massive payments for the University of Pennsylvania if its technology ended up getting used in new mRNA-based vaccines. Well, UPenn’s technology did end up getting used in the mRNA-based Coronavirus vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech, and the deal has led to massive revenue for the university. Joe Biden, who was working for the University of Pennsylvania when the deal was made, received more than $900,000 from the University of Pennsylvania in the two years before he ran for president in this past election.

    The University of Pennsylvania also houses the pro-vaccine website FactCheck.org. University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann is now Biden’s nominee for Ambassador to Germany. The Biden administration’s FDA has speedily approved or authorized Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines including for children — all while the Penn Biden Center’s parent university enjoys massive profits from vaccine sales and FDA approval. And the Pfizer-connected FDA even knew about numerous adverse events for children related to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but allowed children to be injected with it anyway. Now, as the FDA considers emergency use authorization for a Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children as young as six months old, the direct financial relationship between these vaccines and Joe Biden’s think tank must be exposed.

    University of Pennsylvania Profits From Pfizer-BioNTech And Moderna Vaccines

    NATIONAL FILE’s source explained to us that “UPenn earns massive payments (actual terms confidential, likely in the billions)” from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.

    The University of Pennsylvania admitted in December 2020 that “The Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines both use licensed University of Pennsylvania technology. As a result of these licensing relationships, Penn, Dr. Weissman and Dr. Kariko have received and may continue to receive significant financial benefits in the future based on the sale of these products. BioNTech provides funding for Dr. Weissman’s research into the development of additional infectious disease vaccines.” It turns out that Dr. Katalin Kariko is both an adjunct professor at UPenn’s Perelman School of Medicine and also a BioNTech vice president.

    On November 5, 2018, BioNTech stated: “BioNTech AG, a rapidly growing biotechnology company focused on the development of immunotherapies for the precise and individualized treatment of cancer and prevention of infectious diseases and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), Philadelphia, USA, today announced that they have entered into a strategic research collaboration. The goal of the exclusive, multi-year partnership is to develop novel nucleoside-modified mRNA vaccine candidates for the prevention and treatment of various infectious diseases. Under the terms of the agreement, BioNTech and the lab of Drew Weissman, MD, PhD, at Penn will exchange their in-depth knowledge and experience in mRNA research and development to advance the discovery of novel vaccine candidates. Penn will be responsible for a dedicated preclinical research program from discovery through to the completion of IND-enabling studies in up to ten infectious disease indications. BioNTech will be eligible to receive an exclusive worldwide license to further develop and commercialize product candidates arising from the research collaboration. If proprietary Penn technology is part of a new mRNA-based vaccine, the university will be eligible to receive additional milestone payments and royalties from BioNTech. Detailed financial terms were not disclosed.”

    Drew Weissmann’s work led directly to the Coronavirus vaccines including the Pfizer/BioNTech injection. In December 2020, Penn Medicine stated: “The scientific team whose 2005 messenger RNA biology discovery at the University of Pennsylvania helped pave the way for the COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna received their first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine together on Friday, Dec. 18 at Penn, more than 20 years after they began their basic science collaboration. Drew Weissman, MD, PhD, a professor of Infectious Diseases in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, and Katalin Karikó, PhD, an adjunct associate professor at Penn and a senior vice president at BioNTech, together discovered that exchanging one of the four building blocks of messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) molecules could greatly increase its therapeutic potential. They shared their perspectives as longtime researchers in the field who are comfortable taking the vaccines themselves, and called on the public to trust the decades of scientific research that has led to these important vaccines now being deployed in the global fight against the virus, encouraging others to get vaccinated when it becomes available to them.”

    HERE IS THE Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) LICENSING AGREEMENT BETWEEN BIONTECH AND THE TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA DATED OCTOBER 9, 2018: The agreement states that “All payments to Penn hereunder shall be made by deposit of USD in the requisite amount to the “The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania…”

    According to the SEC Licensing Agreement, BioNTech pays the University of Pennsylvania with “milestone payments” for each vaccine approval application that gets approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or another regulatory agency, up to the first three approvals.

    Look at these “Development Milestones” that the University of Pennsylvania gets paid for, and keep in mind that the term “BLA,” according to this agreement, is defined as “an application submitted to a Regulatory Authority for marketing approval of a product, including (a) a Biologics License Application or New Drug Application submitted to the FDA, (b) a Marketing Authorization Application (“MAA”) in the European Union, (c) any equivalent or comparable application, registration or certification in any other country or region, or (d) any successor applications or procedures, supplements or amendments that may be submitted with respect to the foregoing.”

    The BLA process appears to be very lucrative for the University of Pennsylvania. For example, when the FDA approved the Pfizer-BioNTech “COMIRNATY” Coronavirus vaccine in August 2021, the FDA granted “BLA APPROVAL” to the injection.

    BioNTech pays the University of Pennsylvania “Commercial Milestone Payments” corresponding to worldwide vaccine sales, meaning that the University of Pennsylvania makes more money if Pfizer-BioNTech sells more vaccines:

    The University of Pennsylvania scored civil legal immunity for itself in its deal with BioNTech, including from any cases of “bodily injury” or “death” that might be associated with the vaccine. According to the SEC Licensing Agreement: “Licensee shall defend, indemnify and hold Penn and its respective trustees, officers, faculty, students, employees, contractors and agents (the “Penn Indemnitees”) harmless from and against any and all liability, damage, loss, cost or expense (including reasonable attorneys’ fees), including, without limitation, bodily injury, risk of bodily injury, death and property damage to the extent arising out of Third Party claims or suits related to: the gross negligence, recklessness or wrongful intentional acts or omissions of Licensee, its Affiliates or Sublicensees and its or their respective directors, officers, employees and agents, in connection with Licensee’s performance of its obligations or exercise of its rights under this Agreement…any violation of Law by Licensee or its Affiliates or Sublicensees…”

    Joe Biden’s Penn Biden Center is hosted and reportedly funded by the University of Pennsylvania

    In 2017, University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann announced the launch of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, with Joe Biden taking over as the head of the Penn Biden Center and also assuming a role as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. The University of Pennsylvania stated that “The Center will be located in Washington, D.C. Biden will also have an office on the Penn campus in Philadelphia…The Penn Biden Center promises significant impact for both Penn’s teaching and research missions. As Presidential Practice Professor, Biden will hold joint appointments in the Annenberg School for Communication and the School of Arts and Sciences, with a secondary affiliation in the Wharton School.”

    Joe Biden made more than $900,000 from the University of Pennsylvania between 2017 and 2019 for very little work. Biden confirmed his leave of absence from the University of Pennsylvania in April 2019 when he kicked off his presidential campaign. The liberal American Prospect reported that “The center basically functioned as a foreign-policy think tank for Biden’s inner circle. It gave Penn a foothold in Washington…”

    University of Pennsylvania professor and vice provost of global initiatives Zeke Emanuel, a key architect of Obamacare when he served in the Obama administration, publicly welcomed Biden to UPenn. Tony Blinken, who now serves as Joe Biden’s Secretary of State, was the Penn Biden Center’s managing director before he ran the Biden State Department. The Penn Biden Center’s current leadership team includes Obama administration alum Caroline Tess, and its business manager is a longtime employee of the University of Pennsylvania. Recent Penn Biden Center officials Ariana Berengaut and Colin Kahl, who pushed pro-vaccine propaganda in the early period of the Coronavirus pandemic, have both worked for either Joe Biden or for the Obama-Biden administration and Kahl is now Biden’s Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Michael Carpenter, the recent Penn Biden Center managing director who pushes hawkish talking points against Russia, is now working as an ambassador in the Biden administration.

    According to Politico: “The Penn Biden Center does not fundraise. The University of Pennsylvania uses general funds to operate the center and has no plans to solicit money for it in the future, according to a university spokesperson.”

    When the Penn Biden Center opened in February 2018, Joe Biden was at the launch ceremony in Washington, D.C. with University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann. The Penn Biden Center brags that “The Penn Biden Center officially opened our doors on February 8, 2018, with an event featuring the President of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Amy Gutmann, and a discussion on global affairs between Joe Biden and distinguished journalist and Penn alumna, Andrea Mitchell. The center welcomed guests from Penn and across the worlds of government and foreign policy, including former Secretary of State John Kerry, former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, and current and former members of the U.S. Congress.”

    UPenn Hosts The Pro-Vaccine Website FactCheck.Org

    NATIONAL FILE’s source told us: “Even in FactCheck.Org’s seemingly extensive “A Guide to Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 Vaccine,” they omit info about their host university’s contributions to mRNA and payments from BioNTech specifically. There is no mention at all of UPenn’s mRNA licensing agreements.”

    FactCheck.org, which claims to be “nonpartisan,” states the following on its website: “FactCheck.org is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The APPC was established by publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg to create a community of scholars within the University of Pennsylvania that would address public policy issues at the local, state and federal levels.”

    The Annenberg Public Policy Center, which owns FactCheck.org, is based on the University of Pennsylvania campus in Philadelphia and also in Washington, D.C. and is funded with an endowment from the Annenberg Foundation, which partners with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Annenberg Foundation is FactCheck.org’s top funder according to its most recent financial disclosure. FactCheck.org also takes funding from Facebook and Google and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation but claims that its donors “have no control over our editorial decisions.”

    FactCheck.org has an extremely close working relationship with its host university. FactCheck.org states that “FactCheck.org receives in-kind support from the Annenberg Public Policy Center including some infrastructure costs as well as supervisory, technical, and administrative support from APPC faculty and staff. We do not attempt to assign a dollar value to these in-kind services, which are funded from the APPC’s own resources.” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center and the co-founder of FactCheck.org, is a University of Pennsylvania professor. FactCheck.org’s director emeritus Brooks Jackson gave birth to FactCheck.org shortly after joining the Annenberg Public Policy Center. FactCheck.org also states that “Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page, which is managed on our behalf by the University of Pennsylvania.” The University of Pennsylvania runs a donation fund for FactCheck.org.

    via National File

    May 27, 2022 at 06:51AM