Politically - The FOP Is A Pimple On A Gnat's Ass Compared With The Teacher's Unions...,

influencewatch |  The Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) is a membership association and labor union comprised of more than 330,000 law enforcement officers. Officers are members of local chapters known as “lodges,” which act as labor unions or fraternal organizations, and number over 2,200 nationwide. The FOP claims to improve working conditions for police officers as well as maintain safety for the public through education, community involvement, and legislation, among other things.^[1] Lodges engage in collective bargaining on behalf of police officers in states that permit such bargaining.^[2]

The FOP has a full-time lobbying component, the Steve Young Law Enforcement Legislative Advocacy Center, which advocates for or against legislation to protect government worker labor unions, law enforcement, and the FOP’s interests.^[3] The FOP has spent nearly $6 million lobbying since 1998.^[4] In the 116^th Congress, FOP supported legislation like the Social Security Fairness Act, legislation that would eliminate the exemption for state and local government workers from Social Security;^[5] the Law Enforcement Officers Equity Act covering police retirement administration;^[6] and the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act, legislation that would require states and municipalities to engage in collective bargaining with police unions like the FOP local lodges.^[7][8]

The FOP opposes any potential legislation that may negatively affect law enforcement, including legislation that would weaken protections for police officers regarding healthcare and overtime, create or support civilian review boards, or normalize relations with countries like Cuba and Mexico, which the FOP deems safe havens for “cop-killers.” ^[9] The FOP also opposes any amendment or legislation that would weaken the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act (CAFRA) of 2000.^[10] CAFRA was seen as favoring law enforcement over citizens by only increasing law enforcement’s burden of proof to a preponderance of evidence, as opposed to clear and convincing evidence, when seizing property alleged to have been used for criminal purposes. CAFRA also allowed formerly secret information to be shared between prosecutors and authorities seeking civil asset forfeiture.^[11]

Though the FOP has supported some Republicans (most prominently endorsing Republican candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential election^[12]), its federal political action committee has in most election cycles contributed the larger share of its donations to Democrats; in 2014, it made no contributions to any federal Republicans, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.^[13]

The FOP was established in 1915 by two police officers in Pittsburgh. It became a national organization in 1917.^[14]

Michael Forest Reinoehl: Not Just Boys - Aimless Old Men Out'Chere Looking For Meaning Too!!!

oregonlive |  A 48-year-old man who was accused of carrying a loaded gun at an earlier downtown Portland protest is under investigation in the fatal shooting Saturday night of a right-wing demonstrator after a pro-Trump rally.

Michael Forest Reinoehl calls himself an anti-fascist and has posted videos and photos of demonstrations he attended since late June, accompanied by the hashtags #blacklivesmatter, #anewnation and #breonnataylor.

Reinoehl was raised in Sandy and has had recent addresses in Northeast Portland, Gresham and Clackamas. He described himself on social media and in a video interview with Bloomberg QuickTake News as a professional snowboarder and contractor who has former military experience but “hated” his time in the army.

Sources familiar with the case but not authorized to speak said police are investigating Reinoehl. A family member also identified him as a man captured in photos and video seen leaving the shooting scene shortly before 9 p.m. Saturday.

Aaron Danielson, a supporter of the conservative group Patriot Prayer, was shot in the chest and died in the street. It was soon after most cars in a caravan of supporters of President Donald Trump had left the city’s downtown streets.

Reinoehl’s posts indicate he attended many protests in Portland that began three months ago after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis under the knee of a police officer.

On July 5 at one of the demonstrations, Reinoehl was cited at 2:10 a.m. in the 700 block of Southwest Main Street on allegations of possessing a loaded gun in a public place, resisting arrest and interfering with police

He was given a date to appear in court later that month, but the allegations were dropped on July 30 with a “no complaint,” according to court records. The documents don’t indicate why prosecutors decided not to pursue the accusations. Reinoehl spent no time behind bars.

Brent Weisberg, a spokesman for Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt, said the office is still reviewing that July case involving Reinoehl.

Kyle Rittenhouse: Dust In The Wind Of Competing Narrative Hegemons...,

thesource |  Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old thug suspected of shooting three people and killing two during protests in Kenosha over the police shooting of Jacob Blake was recently caught on camera assaulting a woman. Camera footage shows the troubled teen jumping in a fight amongst two women and punching a girl from behind.

Rittenhouse, who lives in Antioch, Illinois—which is about an hour north of Chicago and about 30 minutes west of Kenosha and another teenage male can be seen getting in a girl’s face and shouting at her.

He is also wearing the same red, white and blue Crocs shown in the viral photo of him holding an assault rifle. After about 30 seconds, a fight breaks out, and Kyle can then clearly be seen punching one of the girls. Soon after a group o black men filming the incident jump Kyle for assaulting the woman. Rittenhouse was charged Thursday by Wisconsin prosecutors with six criminal counts—including two counts first-degree intentional homicide and one count of attempted homicide. He also faces charges of recklessly endangering the safety of two other victims and possessing a weapon while under the age of 18. If convicted of the two first-degree intentional homicide charges, he could face life in prison.

Speaking Of Turns At Nutsacks, Hillary Clinton Gave Ghislaine Maxwell's Nephew A Plum State Dept. Gig

Very curious...look where Ghislaine Maxwell’s nephew & one of two Clinton political appointees to the State Department Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs Alexander Djerassi was workinghttps://t.co/B9CtK9fVqY https://t.co/eB70wDYIW1

— TrueAnon Pod (@TrueAnonPod) February 6, 2020

thedailybeast |  Now the celebrity tabloid OK! Magazine is reporting that ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “gifted” Maxwell’s nephew, Alexander Djerassi, a position within her department when he was just out of college and gave him “special treatment.”

The Daily Beast could not confirm details of Djerassi’s appointment with the State Department nor if the role was in fact "gifted" by Clinton.

The reports come as Maxwell, 58, awaits trial in a Brooklyn federal lockup for allegedly grooming and trafficking girls for Epstein.

The report also appears to reference Djerassi’s LinkedIn profile, which lists his role as chief of staff for the “Office of the Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs” from May 2011 to June 2012. Djerassi served as special assistant to the office from May 2009 to May 2011, his online profile says.

Djerassi’s name also popped up in a collection of Clinton’s emails hacked via WikiLeaks. In a November 2011 message, Assistant Secretary Jeffrey Feltman referred to his “special assistant, Alex Djerassi.” Feltman mentioned Djerassi again in a January 2012 email, according to WikiLeaks.

Djerassi was also a nonresident associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. A biography on the endowment’s website states Djerassi’s research “focused on Tunisia and U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East and North Africa.” The bio adds, “From 2009 to 2012, Djerassi was chief of staff and special assistant in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, covering U.S. relations with Arab states, Israel, and Iran. He worked on matters relating to democratization and civil society in the Arab world, the Arab uprisings, and Israeli-Palestinian peace.”

“Djerassi has served as a U.S. representative to the Friends of Libya conferences, Friends of the Syrian People conferences, U.S.-GCC Strategic Coordination Forum, and several UN General Assemblies,” the profile concludes.

The role at the State Department wasn’t the nephew’s only Clinton-related gig.

From September 2007 to June 2008, Djerassi was a policy associate for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. He listed his job duties as such: “Researched and drafted memos, briefings, and policy papers for candidate, senior staff, and news media on wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues. Prepared for more than 20 debates.” (In late 2007, Epstein was under investigation for trafficking girls in Palm Beach and working on a secret plea deal with federal prosecutors. Maxwell is believed to be one accomplice who was protected under the controversial agreement.)

The Yale and Princeton alum—the son of Maxwell’s sister Isabel—apparently returned for Clinton’s 2016 presidential run.

Djerassi lists a job as “national security policy planner” for the “Clinton-Kaine Presidential Transition Team” in 2016.

Durham And Barr Better BombThese Beezies Like They Were In Beirut!!!

realclearinvestigations |  While much speculation inside the Beltway says U.S. Attorney John Durham will punt the results of his so-called Spygate investigation past the election to avoid charges of political interference, sources who have worked with Durham on past public corruption cases doubt he'll bend to political pressure — and they expect him to drop bombshells before Labor Day.

Durham’s boss, Attorney General Bill Barr, also pushed back on the notion his hand-picked investigator would defer action. Under Democratic questioning on Capitol Hill last week, he refused to rule out a pre-election release.

"Under oath, do you commit to not releasing any report by Mr. Durham before the November election?” Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Fla.) asked Barr, citing longstanding Justice Department policy not to announce new developments in politically sensitive cases before an election.

“No,” the attorney general curtly replied.

Justice Department policy prohibits prosecutors from taking overt steps in politically charged cases typically within 60 days of an election. Accordingly, Durham would have to make a move by the Friday before Labor Day, or Sept. 4. 

A low-profile prosecutor, Durham has kept a tight lid on his investigation into the origins of the specious Russiagate investigation of Donald Trump and his 2016 campaign, leading to rampant speculation about who he might prosecute and whether he would take action ahead of the Nov. 3 presidential election. 

That could well be of historic consequence, since his probe involves both the Trump administration and high-level officials in the previous administration, including Trump's presumptive Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. Recently declassified FBI notes show Biden offered input into the investigation of Trump adviser Michael Flynn in early January 2017. Another declassified document reveals that Biden was among those who requested Flynn’s identity be “unmasked” in foreign intelligence intercepts around that same time.

If Durham announces criminal indictments or plea agreements involving former officials operating under the Obama-Biden administration, or releases a report documenting widespread corruption, independent voters could sour on Biden and sympathize with Trump.  On the other hand, kicking the ball past the election could dispirit Trump’s base.

Pimp-Procuress Tried To Create Global "Community" (Male-Bonding Via Two Piece And A Biscuit Snacks?)

influencewatch  |  The Project’s mission was to raise awareness for ocean conservation efforts. Maxwell spoke at a 2014 Council on Foreign Relations event about the issue. ^[8] She also spoke at events at the United Nations in 2013 and 2014. ^[9][10] She also gave a TED Talk. ^[11][12]

These high-profile events dovetailed with Maxwell’s and the Project’s high-profile partnerships. The Project’s effort to hold the United Nations to sustainable promises made regarding the ocean were praised and backed by the Clinton Global Initiative. ^[13][14]

Maxwell authored a 2015 op-ed for the Project’s newsletter, “The Daily Catch,” which theorized the moment the oceans “failed” due to environmental harm. ^[15] Archives of The Daily Catch were live as of August 17, 2019. TerraMar Project’s director of development Brian Yurasitis’ LinkedIn profile shows that the Project had several projects as part of its mission. ^[16] One project was the “How I sea” campaign, which collected stories from environmentalists and others who took photos of the ocean around the world. ^[17]

The #NoMoreButts initiative was the Project’s effort to create more opportunities for smokers to dispose of cigarette butts in an environmentally friendly fashion. ^[18]

Ghislaine Maxwell

Maxwell is the daughter of controversial British media magnate Robert Maxwell, who was implicated in mishandling the pension fund of the Daily Mirror after his death in 1991. ^[19]

After Ghislaine Maxwell moved to New York following her father’s death, she became widely known for her high-end social connections with U.S. Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein, British royalty, and others. ^[20][21] She attended Chelsea Clinton’s wedding. ^[22]

Despite decades in the public eye, she became a very private person in 2016. That year, she sold her $15 million home and largely disappeared from the public. ^[23]

After Epstein’s death, Maxwell became a notable figure amid allegations that she was involved in Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking scheme. A federal court ordered the release of 2,000 pages of documents related to a 2015 lawsuit filed by one of Epstein’s accusers; the woman alleged that Maxwell had solicited her to perform sex acts for Epstein as a 16-year-old. Maxwell denied the allegations and has not been criminally charged for these alleged acts as of early July 2020. ^[24] Maxwell reportedly has settled lawsuits with two women who claimed she was involved in Epstein’s exploitation without admitting guilt. ^[25][26]

Maxwell has been involved in many public projects and efforts. She co-hosted a launch party for the publishing platform Ideapod in 2013. ^[27][28]

In July 2020, federal prosecutors secured an indictment of Maxwell on charges related to conspiracy in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of underage girls; she was arrested and faced trial as of early July.^[29]

The Linkage Between Davos And L'Affaire Epstein

BusinessInsider |  Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao says Ghislaine Maxwell was rubbing elbows with Silicon Valley's elites in 2011 — and Pao believes people suspected Maxwell's ties to child trafficking at the time and didn't care.

Maxwell was arrested last week and is awaiting trial for four criminal charges related to procuring and transporting minors for illegal sex acts. Prosecutors say Maxwell participated in a sex trafficking operation alongside her partner Jeffrey Epstein.

Pao, a former partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, said Maxwell was at the firm's holiday party in 2011, more than two years after Epstein was first convicted of soliciting sex from a 14 year old. Maxwell was Epstein's long-time girlfriend and associate at the time but did not face any criminal charges prior to her 2020 arrest.

"[Maxwell] was at the Kleiner holiday party in 2011, but I had no desire to meet her much less have a photo taken with her," Pao wrote in a tweet, screenshotted and reposted by reporter Lachlan Markay. "We knew about her supplying underage girls for sex, but I guess that was fine with the 'cool' people who managed the tightly controlled guest list."

Pao set her Twitter account to private Monday morning after sending the tweet. When reached for comment by Business Insider, Pao shared two additional tweets that she subsequently posted clarifying her remarks. In one tweet, Pao linked to a Daily Mail report published in March 2011 in which Epstein's victims accused Maxwell of participating in the abuse.

"To be clear, the press had described her as supplying underage girls for sex, but she had not been charged so I guess it would be more accurate to say we 'suspected' v 'knew,'" Pao wrote.

According to a 2011 Business Insider report, the Kleiner Perkins holiday party that year drew esteemed guests including former Vice President Al Gore, Apple VP of Engineering Mike Abbott, and former HP chairman Ray Lane.

A Kleiner Perkins spokesperson declined to comment.

Who Is The Target Of This Epstein Appeasement And Why Right Now?

tatler |  The news comes following a public back and forth between the US Department of Justice and Prince Andrew’s legal team over the royal’s alleged lack of cooperation in the ongoing investigations into Epstein. But one of the US prosecutors leading the enquiries, Geoffrey Berman, has now been sacked from his role as Attorney for the Southern District of New York by Donald Trump after refusing to stand down.

According to the Times, the US Attorney General, William Barr, asked President Trump to remove Berman – who had also overseen the prosecution of a number of Trump’s associates. Berman initially responded by stating that he had ‘no intention of resigning’ after Trump ally Barr unexpectedly announced that Berman was ‘stepping down’.

Earlier in June it was reported that the US Department of Justice had asked the Home Office to help it question Andrew over his links to Epstein. The Duke of York’s legal team accused the DoJ of ‘breaching their own confidentiality rules’, claiming that the royal had ‘offered his assistance as a witness’ on at least three occasions this year.

Berman retaliated by stating that Andrew had ‘yet again sought to falsely portray himself to the public as eager and willing to cooperate.’ He added that in fact, the Duke ‘has not given an interview to federal authorities, has repeatedly declined our request to schedule such an interview, and nearly four months ago informed us unequivocally – through the very same counsel who issued today's release – that he would not come in for such an interview… If Prince Andrew is, in fact, serious about cooperating with the ongoing federal investigation, our doors remain open, and we await word of when we should expect him.’

It was subsequently reported that Andrew would not cooperate with the Epstein investigation unless American investigators offer him ‘an olive branch’. The Duke of York has consistently denied any wrongdoing in regards to his links with his former friend.

Detained "Insidious Creature" Fitna Squeal Like A Pig Caught Under The Gate

dailymail |  Speaking to The Sun, Epstein's former employer Steven Hoffenberg said the paedophile's ex-girlfriend Maxwell 'knows everything' and will 'totally co-operate' after her arrest. 

Hoffenberg, a convicted fraudster who employed Epstein at Towers Financial in the 1980s, said 'there's a lot of people very worried' about what Maxwell could reveal. 'She's going to cooperate and be very important. Andrew is definitely, definitely concerned,' Hoffenberg said. 

On Thursday, a source close to the Duke of York's legal team told DailyMail.com that he was 'bewildered' by prosecutors' remarks that they wanted to speak to him.  

'The Duke’s team remains bewildered given that we have twice communicated with the DOJ in the last month and to-date, we have had no response.'

On Thursday, Acting US Attorney Audrey Strauss said the investigation into Epstein's decades of abuse is ongoing and that she'd 'welcome' Prince Andrew 'coming in to provide a statement', prompting speculation that he may among people investigators may focus their attention on next.

'We would welcome Prince Andrew coming in to talk to us. We would like to have the benefit of his statement. Our doors remain open. We would welcome him coming in and giving us an opportunity to hear his statement,' she said. 

It opens the door to questions of jurisdiction and whether or not US Attorney Strauss may charge for alleged incidents that happened in London and not America. Among the claims in the indictment is that Maxwell groomed one of the victims in London. At her press conference, Strauss said some of the sexual abuse also happened at Maxwell's house in London. 

US attorney Lisa Bloom, who represents one of Maxwell's accusers, said 'all others accused of enabling Jeffrey Epstein's predations must immediately be brought to justice as well'.  

'Maxwell's brutal, ruthless behaviour caused my client tremendous pain,' Ms Bloom said in a statement, adding that she and her client applauded the socialite's 'long overdue arrest'. 

One Epstein accuser, Michelle Licata, has previously voiced hopes that prosecutors looking into Epstein were 'going to start digging into his life... and start pulling out this spider web of people that were related to it', according to the New York Post. 

Former federal prosecutor Jessica Roth told Bloomberg: 'There is no way for prosecutors to present a case against her without going into all the evidence they had against Epstein, because the charges here are intertwined.

'The original indictment against Jeffrey Epstein made it clear that he didn’t act alone and that the government had evidence that other people were also involved.' 

Celebrating Maxwell's arrest, Prince Andrew's accuser, Roberts said last night: 'Thank you to the FBI, Southern District of New York and anyone involved in the arrest of this insidious creature. Hope the judge throws the book at her. So so so happy- she’s finally where she belongs.'

Q Gillum: "What We Gone Do Boss?!?!?!"

kmbc |  Mayor Quinton Lucas is calling on a special session of the Missouri General Assembly to address violent crime in Kansas City.

On Friday, Lucas released a letter she sent to Missouri Gov. Mike Parson calling the situation in Kansas City a ‘crisis point.’ In the letter, he asks Parson to call for a special session of the assembly to allow state senators and representatives to vote on legislation to enhance witness protection funding in Missouri.

“We need state legislative action on several items we have previously discussed to address our problem,” Lucas said in the letter. “While we will continue to pursue a broad set of social services and other tools to address violent crime now and in the future, specific action from Jefferson City can help us apprehend and incarcerate murderers currently walking the streets of Kansas City and protect witnesses in our neighborhoods who are frequently scared to speak.”

[ READ FULL LETTER FROM LUCAS ]

Lucas said additional help is also needed to provide more tools for law enforcement and prosecutors to “interrupt conspiracies to commit murder and other violent acts, particularly offenses committed by felons using deadly weapons.”

“Kansas City is too fine a city, and Missouri too fine a state to allow violent criminality to define our way of life,” Lucas wrote. “We will persevere through these challenges, but our children, our law enforcement community, and all Kansas Citians need change quickly."

Coincidence Theory: Ghislaine Maxwell Headed To The MCC Epstein Kill Box

bloomberg |  Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime friend of Jeffrey Epstein arrested Thursday for helping him sexually abuse underage girls, could wind up in the same jail where he committed suicide last year.

Maxwell, 58, was arrested early Thursday morning in New Hampshire and is set for an afternoon hearing in federal court there. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan, who are handling the case, are opposing bail and seeking to have her held in custody before trial.

“We will be seeking detention,” Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss in Manhattan said in a press conference announcing charges. Prosecutors said Maxwell helped Epstein entice girls as young as 14 into sex from 1994 through 1997, then lied about it under oath in 2016.

Prosecutors warn that Maxwell has a “strong incentive” to flee if she’s not detained because she faces years in prison. “That risk is only amplified by the defendant’s extensive international ties, her citizenship in two foreign countries, her wealth, and her lack of meaningful ties to the United States,” they wrote in a detention memo. “In short, Maxwell has three passports, large sums of money, extensive international connections, and absolutely no reason to stay” in the U.S.

Back to New York

Unless the judge in New Hampshire releases her on bail, Maxwell will either be held overnight in a local jail there or transported immediately back to New York, said Jack Donson, a consultant who formerly worked for the federal Bureau of Prisons. In New York, she would likely be transferred to one of two federal lockups, the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan or the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

5th Most Dangerous Kansas City Wastes As Much Per Capita On Policing As Chicago

You will find more infographics at Statista

kansascity |  The four largest cities in the metro area will spend over $400 million on law enforcement this year. That doesn’t count the millions spent on courts, prosecutors and jails. Just the men and women in blue.

Naturally, Kansas City, Missouri, spends the most, having the largest population and the most law enforcement needs. No single division within city government gets more financial support than the police department.

The KCPD is budgeted to get $273 million this fiscal year, which amounts to 16 percent of the city’s $1.7 billion budget. That works out to about $554 for each of the estimated 492,000 people who were living within the city limits at last count.

That’s more than twice the per capita amount that suburban Overland Park spends on its police department and four times more than the citizens of Omaha, Nebraska, pay for police protection in a city whose population is only slightly less than Kansas City’s.

As with any police department or private business, for that matter, most of the KCPD’s budget goes to pay the salaries and benefits of its personnel, roughly 1,400 sworn officers and 600 civilian workers.

The fire department is second with 1,300 employees, followed by the water department.

Just under a quarter of the police budget goes toward paying the health insurance and pension obligations the city owes to employees and retirees.

From a program standpoint, about $100 million supports the patrol bureau, which includes all those cops you see driving down the streets responding to calls for service and enforcing traffic laws.

About $41 million underwrites investigations, of which just under a third is aimed at vice and narcotics crimes, another third to investigate violent crimes and the rest to cover other investigations and underwrite the cost of the crime lab.

Large amounts of the budget go for support services, like vehicle maintenance and the computer network.

Yet even with a quarter-billion-dollar-plus budget, the police department could always use more to keep up with all the demands placed upon it, said Nathan Garrett, one of the four members of the five-member board of police commissioners appointed by the governor that sets department policy. By state statute, the mayor of Kansas City has the fifth vote.

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/article243490386.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/article243490386.html#storylink=cpy

Coronapocalypse Expendables

themarshallproject |  In Houston, the massive county jail has stopped admitting people arrested for certain low-level crimes. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, people who usually spend their days fighting with each other—public defenders and prosecutors—joined forces to get 75 people released from jail in a single day. And outside Oakland, California, jailers are turning to empty hotel rooms to make sure the people they let out have a place to go.

Across the country, the coronavirus outbreak is transforming criminal justice in the most transient and turbulent part of the system: local jails. Run mostly by county sheriffs, jails hold an ever-changing assortment of people—those who are awaiting trial and cannot afford to pay bail; those convicted of low-level offenses; overflows from crowded prisons. 

Even without a global pandemic, many local jails struggle to provide adequate medical care for a population that is already high-risk: many people in jails suffer from addiction or mental illness. Some have died after lax medical care for treatable illnesses. 

“Basically, the shit hit the fan,” said Corbin Brewster, chief public defender of Tulsa County. “COVID-19 is just a magnifying glass for all the problems in the criminal justice system.” 

Local officials’ responses have run the gamut. In the crisis of the moment, some are adopting measures long urged by criminal justice reformers: declining to prosecute or freeing people who have committed drug offenses or nonviolent crimes; releasing the sick or elderly; trying to reduce the jail population. For example, officials have been temporarily transferring some at-risk detainees to housing units in Kent, Washington, which were built to house homeless people.

But others have stuck to tough-on-crime tactics or rhetoric. The sheriff in Bristol County, near Boston, argued the incarcerated would be safer locked up, as would the public. 

Because millions of people each year cycle in and out of jail, experts have long warned that these lockups have the potential to be petri dishes of infection—an assertion coronavirus will test.

This About Main Core and Controlavirus - Not PROMIS and L'Affaire Epstein....,

salon |  "It's not just the 'Terrorist Surveillance Program,'" agrees Gregory T. Nojeim from the Center for Democracy and Technology, referring to the Bush administration's misleading name for the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. "We need a broad investigation on the way all the moving parts fit together. It seems like we're always looking at little chunks and missing the big picture." 

A prime area of inquiry for a sweeping new investigation would be the Bush administration's alleged use of a top-secret database to guide its domestic surveillance. Dating back to the 1980s and known to government insiders as "Main Core," the database reportedly collects and stores -- without warrants or court orders -- the names and detailed data of Americans considered to be threats to national security. 

According to several former U.S. government officials with extensive knowledge of intelligence operations, Main Core in its current incarnation apparently contains a vast amount of personal data on Americans, including NSA intercepts of bank and credit card transactions and the results of surveillance efforts by the FBI, the CIA and other agencies. One former intelligence official described Main Core as "an emergency internal security database system" designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law. Its name, he says, is derived from the fact that it contains "copies of the 'main core' or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community." 

Some of the former U.S. officials interviewed, although they have no direct knowledge of the issue, said they believe that Main Core may have been used by the NSA to determine who to spy on in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Moreover, the NSA's use of the database, they say, may have triggered the now-famous March 2004 confrontation between the White House and the Justice Department that nearly led Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI director William Mueller and other top Justice officials to resign en masse. 

The Justice Department officials who objected to the legal basis for the surveillance program -- former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey and Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel -- testified before Congress last year about the 2004 showdown with the White House. Although they refused to discuss the highly classified details behind their concerns, the New York Times later reported that they were objecting to a program that "involved computer searches through massive electronic databases" containing "records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans." 

According to William Hamilton, a former NSA intelligence officer who left the agency in the 1970s, that description sounded a lot like Main Core, which he first heard about in detail in 1992. Hamilton, who is the president of Inslaw Inc., a computer services firm with many clients in government and the private sector, says there are strong indications that the Bush administration's domestic surveillance operations use Main Core. 

Hamilton's company Inslaw is widely respected in the law enforcement community for creating a program called the Prosecutors' Management Information System, or PROMIS. It keeps track of criminal investigations through a powerful search engine that can quickly access all stored data components of a case, from the name of the initial investigators to the telephone numbers of key suspects. PROMIS, also widely used in the insurance industry, can also sort through other databases fast, with results showing up almost instantly. "It operates just like Google," Hamilton told me in an interview in his Washington office in May. 

Since the late 1980s, Inslaw has been involved in a legal dispute over its claim that Justice Department officials in the Reagan administration appropriated the PROMIS software. Hamilton claims that Reagan officials gave PROMIS to the NSA and the CIA, which then adapted the software -- and its outstanding ability to search other databases -- to manage intelligence operations and track financial transactions. Over the years, Hamilton has employed prominent lawyers to pursue the case, including Elliot Richardson, the former attorney general and secretary of defense who died in 1999, and C. Boyden Gray, the former White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush. The dispute has never been settled. But based on the long-running case, Hamilton says he believes U.S. intelligence uses PROMIS as the primary software for searching the Main Core database.

This Kneegrow's DNC Annointed and Protected Operative Status Still Very Much Intact

turcopelier |  Why does the name of Joe Biden's former Internet Technology guru, Warren Flood, appear in the meta data of documents posted on the internet by Guccifer 2.0? In case you do not recall, Guccifer 2.0 was identified as someone tied to Russian intelligence who played a direct role in stealing emails from John Podesta. The meta data in question indicates the name of the person who actually copied the original document. We have this irrefutable fact in the documents unveiled by Guccifer 2.0--Warren Flood's name appears prominently in the meta data of several documents attributed to "Guccifer 2.0." When this transpired, Flood was working as the CEO of his own company, BRIGHT BLUE DATA. (brightbluedata.com). Was Flood tasked to masquerade as a Russian operative?

Give Flood some props if that is true--he fooled our Intelligence Community and the entire team of Mueller prosecutors into believing that Guccifer was part of a Russian military intelligence cyber attack. But a careful examination of the documents shows that it is highly unlikely that this was an official Russian cyber operation.

Here's what the U.S. Intelligence Community wrote about Guccifer 2.0 in their very flawed January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment:

We assess with high confidence that the GRU used the Guccifer 2.0 persona, DCLeaks.com, and WikiLeaks to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets.

• • Guccifer 2.0, who claimed to be an independent Romanian hacker, made multiple contradictory statements and false claims about his likely Russian identity throughout the election. Press reporting suggests more than one person claiming to be Guccifer 2.0 interacted with journalists.
  • Content that we assess was taken from e-mail accounts targeted by the GRU in March 2016 appeared on DCLeaks.com starting in June.

The laxity of the Intelligence Community in dealing with empirical evidence was matched by a disturbing lack of curiosity on the part of the Mueller investigators and prosecutors.

Harder I Look At Charles Lieber More Convinced I Become About Kompromat

bloomberg |  On Feb. 6, Charles Lieber was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, making the Harvard nanoscientist just the 30th person in history to achieve the hallowed hat trick at the apex of American science: membership in all three National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

A week earlier, however, he was ushered into a different federal institution in downtown Boston, in handcuffs and an orange jailhouse jumpsuit. He left the federal courthouse after posting $1 million in bail.

Lieber’s arrest on Jan. 28 came in connection with his dealings in China. He hasn’t been charged with any type of economic espionage, intellectual-property theft, or export violations. Instead, he’s accused of lying to U.S. Department of Defense investigators about his work with the People’s Republic—an eye-popping escalation of the Trump administration’s pursuit of scientists and engineers for secretly collaborating with America’s economic rival.

Until now, the government crackdown on undisclosed China ties has ensnared relatively obscure researchers, nearly all of them immigrants from China, in red states such as Georgia, Oklahoma, and Texas. But by targeting Lieber, the chairman of Harvard’s chemistry department and a veritable ivory tower blue blood, prosecutors struck at the crimson heart of the academic elite, raising fears that globalism, when it comes to doing science with China, is being criminalized. The collateral impact, if it deters Chinese students and researchers from coming to the U.S., threatens the American leadership in science and technology that the Trump administration says it’s trying to protect, academic leaders warn.

According to a government affidavit, signed by a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent named Robert Plumb, Lieber signed at least three agreements with Wuhan Technology University, or WUT, in central China. These included a contract with the state-sponsored Thousand Talents Plan—an effort by Beijing to attract mostly expatriate researchers and their know-how back home—worth a total of about $653,000 a year in pay and living expenses for three years, plus $1.74 million to support a new “Harvard-WUT Nano Key Lab” in Wuhan. The government offered no evidence that Lieber actually received those sums.

In April 2018, when Defense Department investigators asked Lieber about his ties to China, he responded that he was familiar with the Thousands Talents Plan but had never been asked to participate in the program, according to the FBI affidavit. “He also told DoD investigators that he ‘wasn’t sure’ how China categorized him,” the agent wrote.

Lieber also deceived Harvard about his China contracts, the affidavit said. Harvard placed Lieber on administrative leave upon his arrest and issued a statement calling the federal charges “extremely serious.” Lieber’s attorney, Peter Gelhaar, declined to comment.

Whatever extracurricular arrangements Lieber may have had in China, his Harvard lab was a paragon of U.S.-China collaboration. He relied on a pipeline of China’s brightest Ph.D. students and postdocs, often more than a dozen at a time, to produce prize-winning research on the revolutionary potential of so-called nanowires in biomedical implants. Dozens of Lieber’s 100 or so former lab members from China have chosen to stay in the U.S. Many now lead their own nanoscience labs at top universities, including Duke, Georgia Tech, MIT, Stanford, University of California at Berkeley, and UCLA.

The Black Desk Killed Malcolm X: That's FBI Not FOI...,

Hipped y'all to the Black Desk in the summer of 2017 -  remember this cat here?

NYTimes |  “The vast majority of white opinion at that time was that this was black-on-black crime, and maybe black-extremist-on-black-extremist crime,” said David Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning civil rights historian. “And there was for decades a consensus in black communities that we are not going to pick up that rock to see what’s underneath it.”

At the time Malcolm spoke at the Audubon Ballroom on Feb. 21, 1965, he was a marked man — spied on by the F.B.I. and the police, denounced as a traitor by the Nation leadership, viscerally hated and beloved. Mr. Farrakhan declared him “worthy of death.” A week before his assassination, his home in Queens was firebombed while he and his wife and four daughters slept inside.

Mr. Muhammad in 2010 uncovered the identity of one of the supposed assassins named in Mr. Hayer’s affidavit, William Bradley, who had changed his name to Almustafa Shabazz and was married to a prominent Newark activist. It was Mr. Bradley’s shotgun blast, researchers contend, that killed Malcolm.

Mr. Shabazz, who died in 2018, denied any involvement in the murder, and lived in plain sight. “I knew him well,” Cory Booker says in the documentary, adding that he was not aware of Mr. Shabazz’s past identity.

Mr. Muhammad published Mr. Shabazz’s name and photograph on his blog in 2010, and then shared his research with Manning Marable, who was working on his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention.” Mr. Muhammad believes that the other three men named in Mr. Hayer’s affidavits are dead.

After the book came out, Alvin Sykes, a Kansas City activist who helped persuade the F.B.I. and Justice Department to create a cold case unit for civil rights-era killings, lobbied federal prosecutors to reinvestigate Malcolm’s murder. The department declined. When Mr. Shabazz died, the last remaining loose end was Mr. Aziz, the former Norman 3X Butler, now 81, who served 20 years for a crime he insists he did not commit.

AOC Still Cute, But This Plump, Pasty, Gun-Grabbing Ginger Here...., Really?

dcist |  A planned gun rally in Richmond, Va. on Monday has prompted Governor Ralph Northam to declare a state of emergency in the commonwealth’s capital, citing “credible intelligence” that many of the demonstrators “may be armed, and have as their purpose not peaceful assembly but violence, rioting, and insurrection.” Northam instituted a temporary ban on firearms on State Capitol grounds in anticipation of the demonstration.

But he’s not the only Virginia politician fearful that the protests slated for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in Richmond could result in a dangerous clash like the fatal Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in 2017.

Facing a series of death threats, Manassas Delegate Lee Carter says he will spend Monday at a safe house instead of the state house, as first reported by Gen.

The threats against Carter—a Democratic Socialist first elected in 2017—also show how an echo chamber of conspiracy theories that begin as social media posts get laundered into mainstream outlets like the Wall Street Journal, and can ultimately lead to real-world peril.

Monday’s rally is a tradition for the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a pro-gun group that lobbies each year in Richmond on Martin Luther King Jr. Day while bearing arms. But this year, a large number of armed militia groups have pledged to join the rally. Northam tweeted that “intelligence suggests militia groups and hate groups, some from out of state, plan to come to the Capitol to disrupt our democratic process with acts of violence.”

At least some of the people who say they’re coming have described it as a “boogaloo,” a word used by the far-right to describe a violent civil war, according to the Daily Beast. This morning, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested three suspected members of a neo-Nazi hate group who were considering going to Virginia’s capital for the rally and had more than 1,500 rounds of rifle ammunition, per prosecutors, the New York Times reported.

As these protesters get ready to descend on Richmond, Carter is planning to be at an undisclosed location amid concerns over his safety.

“People were threatening to murder me and murder my family over something I’m not even doing,” Carter tells DCist from Richmond on Wednesday evening. “These threats are more hateful and more numerous than anything I’ve seen before. I mean, I’m the only socialist elected to a legislature in the south, so I do occasionally get waves of death threats—about every two three months it’ll happen—but this one is far larger and far more serious than anything I’ve seen before by orders of magnitude.” Carter has reported the threats to the Virginia Capitol Police.

Burisma was a Huge Issue for V.P. Joe Biden

johnsolomon |  In recent interviews, Joe Biden has distanced himself from his son’s work at a Ukrainian gas company that was under investigation during the Obama years, with the former vice president  suggesting he didn’t even know Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma Holdings.

There is plenty of evidence that conflicts with the former vice president’s account, including Hunter Biden’s own story that he discussed the company once with his famous father. 

There also was a December 2015 New York Times story that raised the question of whether Hunter Biden’s role at Burisma posed a conflict of interest for the vice president, especially when Joe Biden was leading the fight against Ukrainian corruption while Hunter Biden’s firm was under investigation by Ukrainian prosecutors.

But whatever the Biden family recollections, the Obama State Department clearly saw the Burisma Holdings investigation in the midst of the 2016 presidential election as a Joe Biden issue.

Memos newly released through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Southeastern Legal Foundation on my behalf detail how State officials in June 2016 worked to prepare the new U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, to handle a question about “Burisma and Hunter Biden.”

In multiple drafts of a question-and-answer memo prepared for Yovanovitch’s Senate confirmation hearing, the department’s Ukraine experts urged the incoming ambassador to stick to a simple answer.

“Do you have any comment on Hunter Biden, the Vice President’s son, serving on the board of Burisma, a major Ukrainian Gas Company?,” the draft Q&A asked.

The recommended answer for Yovanovitch: “For questions on Hunter Biden’s role in Burisma, I would refer you to Vice President Biden’s office.”

Barr Changes the Dynamic

sicsempertyrannis |  I do not believe in coincidence. I do not believe that it is a mere coincidence that these three events occurred late last night:

1. The investigation of the roots of the plot to destroy Donald Trump and his Presidency is now a criminal matter.

2. A letter from Inspector General Horowitz announcing that his report on the FISA fraud would be out shortly with no major redactions. 

3. The Government caved to Honey Badger Sidney Powell and allowed her to fully expose criminal conduct by Michael Flynn's prosecutors.

What is going on? Two words. Bill Barr. The Attorney General has pulled the trigger and altered the landscape in the Russiagate saga. Having been granted full authority by the President to declassify information, including intel from the CIA and the NSA, he has now acted in a powerful, but low key way.

The announcement that this is now a criminal investigation means that anyone, including FBI agents and CIA officers, who try to hold back information or hide information will be vulnerable to obstruction of justice charges. Criminal penalties attach.