Not A Fan Of Mayor Eric Adams - But - What Did He Do To Become An Enemy Of The State?

epochtimes  |  An attorney for New York City Mayor Eric Adams confirmed on Friday that the FBI seized the mayor's phones and an iPad as part of an investigation into his campaign financing.

“After learning of the federal investigation, it was discovered that an individual had recently acted improperly. In the spirit of transparency and cooperation, this behavior was immediately and proactively reported to investigators. The Mayor has been and remains committed to cooperating in this matter," his attorney Boyd Johnson said in a statement.

"On Monday night, the FBI approached the mayor after an event. The Mayor immediately complied with the FBI’s request and provided them with electronic devices. The mayor has not been accused of any wrongdoing and continues to cooperate with the investigation."

Mr. Adams also denied any wrongdoing in a statement.

“As a former member of law enforcement, I expect all members of my staff to follow the law and fully cooperate with any sort of investigation—and I will continue to do exactly that. I have nothing to hide,” he stated.

Last week, the FBI raided the home of Brianna Suggs, one of the mayor's chief political consultants, after which the mayor also issued a statement that he was innocent of any wrongdoing.

“I feel extremely comfortable about how I comply with rules and procedures. I’ve stated this over and over again. I hold myself to a high standard, I hold my campaign to a high standard, and I hold my staffers at city hall to a high standard,” he said. He also said that Ms. Suggs was a "real professional" and would remain on his team for his 2025 reelection campaign.

“I am outraged and angry if anyone attempted to use the campaign to manipulate our democracy and defraud our campaign,” Mr. Adams said in the statement.

“I want to be clear, I have no knowledge, direct or otherwise, of any improper fundraising activity—and certainly not of any foreign money.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney in Manhattan declined to comment.

Investigation

The FBI has not made public details of the investigation, but a search warrant was first reported by the New York Times, which reported that the federal investigation is related to alleged corruption in Mr. Adams's 2021 campaign and possible ties to the Turkish government.

The seized devices, which the FBI has likely made copies of, were returned days later.

The mayor's staff has confirmed that his office has met with the federal prosecutors, but did not disclose what they discussed.

After the raid on Ms. Suggs's home, media reported that the relationship between the mayor's 2021 campaign and Brooklyn-based KSK Construction Group's ties to Turkey is the center of the probe.

The KSK Construction Group owns apartment buildings and condominiums throughout the city. It is owned by the KiSKA Construction Corp., a company that possesses two branches of a Turkish hotel chain in the United States.

Turkey

Mr. Adams has visited Turkey multiple times, including as part of official duties in different public offices.

“I’m probably the only mayor in the history of this city that has not only visited Turkey once, but I think I’m on my sixth or seventh visit to Turkey,” Mr. Adams said at a Turkish flag-raising ceremony in New York recently.

Two of those trips were made while he was the Brooklyn Borough President.

Campaign records show that he received donations from three members of a foundation opened by the son of the Turkish president.

At an event this week, the mayor answered reporters' questions about the probe and his ties to Turkey.

“We just thought it was a great opportunity to exchange ideas as we do with all these…countries and we want to attract businesses here,” he said of the trips, according to The City.

“So Turkey as well as any other country, I want to attract people to the city. There’s nothing specific about that one particular country.”

He added that he frequently told his staff to "follow the law."

“I just strongly believe you have to follow the law. It would really shock me if someone that was hired by my campaign did something that was inappropriate,” he said.

 

The Biden Administration Is At War On Five Fronts - YOU Are The Fifth Front

wired  |  Leaders in the United States Senate have been discussing plans to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) beyond its December 31 deadline by amending must-pass legislation this month.

A senior congressional aide tells WIRED that leadership offices and judiciary sources have both disclosed that discussions are underway about saving the Section 702 program in the short term by attaching an amendment extending it to a bill that is sorely needed to extend federal funding and avert a government shutdown one week from now.

The program, last extended in 2018, is due to expire at the end of the year. Without a vote to reauthorize 702, the US government will lose its ability to obtain year-long “certifications” compelling telecommunications companies to wiretap overseas calls, text messages, and emails without being served individual warrants or subpoenas.

Whether the authority is reauthorized before expiring on January 1 or not, the actual surveillance is likely to continue into the spring, when this year’s certifications expire.

Extending the program by attaching it to another bill that Congress can’t avoid is a risky political maneuver that will cause significant unrest among a majority of House lawmakers and a number of senators who are working to reform the 702 program. A top priority for privacy hawks is curtailing the ability of federal law enforcement to use 702 data “incidentally” collected on Americans. The 702 program collects communications from two sources: internet service providers and the companies that conduct traffic between them. The latter source is tapped less frequently but intercepts a greater quantity of domestic communications.

An aide to Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said Jordan was firmly on the side of the reformers and would not support extending 702 through a temporary measure. Chuck Schumer, the senate majority leader, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon.

“America’s security and its citizens’ rights demand more than a short-term fix. Congress has had all year to scrutinize and address this crucial policy question,” says James Czerniawski, a senior policy analyst at the nonprofit Americans for Prosperity. “Doing a short-term extension punts the ball on the critical reforms desperately needed to this program to protect Americans civil liberties.”

While surveillance of US calls is illegal and unconstitutional without a warrant based on probable cause, the government is permitted to collect domestic calls for specific national security purposes under procedures created to minimize its access to them later. The US National Security Agency, which conducts electronic surveillance for the Pentagon, is only permitted to eavesdrop on foreigners who are overseas. Those foreigners, however, many of whom are likely government officials and not criminals or terrorists, frequently exchange calls and emails with people inside the United States, and those get collected as well.

Roughly a quarter of a million people are targeted by the program each year, and it is estimated that the number of individual messages collected reaches into the hundreds of millions.

While the NSA is not allowed to target the communications of “US persons” (an umbrella term for US citizens, legal residents, and corporations), the government has long been permitted to query the database for information on US persons without obtaining warrants.

It is known that the 702 program collects significant numbers of US communications, but the exact quantity is unknown, even to the government. The NSA argues that it would be unfeasible to count the number of Americans incidentally spied on without analyzing the collection thoroughly, further imperiling people’s rights. Privacy watchdogs who have classified knowledge of the program say the term “incidental” is deceiving, in that it makes the volume of the collection sound small.

The term is also frequently conflated with wiretaps that accidentally target Americans, which is called “inadvertent” collection. Incidental collection is factored into the program as an acceptable risk to Americans’ civil liberties, ameliorated by various internal procedures approved by the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Critics of the program say these procedures are frequently violated and do little to nothing to stop the FBI from warrantlessly accessing Americans’ calls and emails without evidence that they’ve committed a crime.

 

The Establishment vs. The American Liberation Movement

Newsweek  |   Newsweek has also reviewed secret FBI and Department of Homeland Security data that track incidents, threats, investigations and cases to try to build a better picture. While experts agree that the current partisan environment is charged and uniquely dangerous (with the threat not only of violence but, in the most extreme scenarios, possibly civil war), many also question whether "terrorism" is the most effective way to describe the problem, or that the methods of counterterrorism developed over the past decade in response to Al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups constitute the most fruitful way to craft domestic solutions.

"The current political environment is not something that the FBI is necessarily responsible for, nor should it be," says Brian Michael Jenkins, one of the world's leading terrorism experts and senior adviser to the president of the RAND Corporation.

In a statement to Newsweek, the FBI said: "The threat posed by domestic violent extremists is persistent, evolving, and deadly. The FBI's goal is to detect and stop terrorist attacks, and our focus is on potential criminal violations, violence and threats of violence. Anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism is one category of domestic terrorism, as well as one of the FBI's top threat priorities." The FBI further said, "We are committed to protecting the safety and constitutional rights of all Americans and will never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity, including a person's political beliefs or affiliations."

The White House declined to comment. The Trump campaign was given an opportunity to comment but did not do so.

What the FBI Data Shows

From the president down, the Biden administration has presented Trump and MAGA as an existential threat to American democracy and talked up the risk of domestic terrorism and violence associated with the 2024 election campaign.

"Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are a threat to the very soul of this country," President Biden tweeted last September, the first time that he explicitly singled out the former president. "MAGA Republicans aim to question not only the legitimacy of past elections but elections being held now and into the future," Biden said.

Biden's Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall said: "The use of violence to pursue political ends is a profound threat to our public safety and national security...it is a threat to our national identity, our values, our norms, our rule of law—our democracy."

For Attorney General Merrick Garland: "Attacks by domestic terrorists are attacks on all of us collectively, aimed at rending the fabric of our democratic society and driving us apart."

Though the FBI's data shows a dip in the number of investigations since the slew of January 6 cases ended, FBI Director Christopher Wray still says that the breach of the Capitol building was "not an isolated event" and the threat is "not going away anytime soon." In a joint report to Congress this June, the Bureau and the Department of Homeland Security say that "Threats from...DVEs [domestic violent extremists] have increased in the last two years, and any further increases in threats likely will correspond to potential flashpoints, such as high-profile elections and campaigns or contentious current events."

The FBI and DHS report concludes: "Sociopolitical developments—such as narratives of fraud in the recent general election, the emboldening impact of the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol, conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and conspiracy theories promoting violence—will almost certainly spur some domestic terrorists to try to engage in violence."

The threats listed in that paragraph are all clearly associated with America's right and in particular with Trump's MAGA supporters. Right after January 6, the FBI co-authored a restricted report ("Domestic Violent Extremists Emboldened in Aftermath of Capitol Breach, Elevated Domestic Terrorism Threat of Violence Likely Amid Political Transitions and Beyond") in which it shifted the definition of AGAAVE ("anti-government, anti-authority violent extremism") from "furtherance of ideological agendas" to "furtherance of political and/or social agendas." For the first time, such groups could be so labeled because of their politics.

It was a subtle change, little noticed, but a gigantic departure for the Bureau. Trump and his army of supporters were acknowledged as a distinct category of domestic violent extremists, even as the FBI was saying publicly that political views were never part of its criteria to investigate or prevent domestic terrorism. Where the FBI sees threats is also plain from the way it categorizes them—a system which on the surface is designed to appear nonpartisan. This shifted subtly days after the events of January 6 when it comes to what the Bureau calls AGAAVE.

"We cannot and do not investigate ideology," a senior FBI official reassured the press after January 6. "We focus on individuals who commit or intend to commit violence or criminal activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security."

The New Narrative: How The Wagons Will Circle The Bidens

amgreatness  |  The strategies of saving the Biden presidency from an impeachment and a Senate trial despite overwhelming evidence of his corruption are starting to emerge.

The Family is confronted with damning evidence from the laptop, from the testimonies of Hunter’s business associates Bobulinksi and Archer, from Ukrainian oligarchs and Viktor Shokin, from IRS whistleblowers, from FBI writs, from a likely pseudonymous Biden trove of 4,000 emails to his son and associates, and from the absolute paranoia of a White House that must constantly change its narrative of denials to adjust to a growing portrait of utter corruption, bribery, and perhaps even the treason of warping U.S. policy to fit Biden family interests.

One of their strategies is to deny, then hedge, then ignore, then grow silent—and repeat the wash/rinse/spin cycle of stonewalling as many times as necessary to evade the mounting truth.

 

Insidiously Joe Biden has retreated from his once loud protestations that he supposedly had no idea of what Hunter and his associates were doing. Such a patently dishonest denial set the model that the President would have no compunction about lying to the American people until the evidence of his wrongdoing becomes overwhelming.

But this first line of defense did not crumble for years—only to be replaced by a second line of denial: Biden may have known of Hunter’s shenanigans, but he had no business interests with him. That was another blatant untruth.

And that additional stalling also allowed Biden to ignore the closing walls of incrimination for even more months. When these two forward lines of defense collapsed, as the Biden consortium knew they eventually would, a retreat to a third line of defense followed: yes, Joe knew, after all, of Hunter’s miscreant shakedowns; and, yes, Joe, after all, conceded that from time to time he did meet Hunter’s business associates, and upon requests made phone calls to Hunter’s clientele. But he did not profit from such knowledge and associations. Instead an upright old Joe from Scranton was playing along with the “illusion” of influence peddling: Scranton naiveté is not D.C. criminality.

Biden’s tripartite lines of defense always got shorter and shallower as evidence mounted. But so far Biden has managed to consume 31 months of his presidency through these strategic retreats. His fourth and final line of defense will likely be that he was involved, that he had rather than feigned contact, but that he did nothing other than what scores of other high-ranking politicians do who rub shoulders with would-be miscreants, sycophants, and crooks—and so did not knowingly take “loans” and “gifts” that had strings attached.

To breach this fourth defense line, House Republicans will have to break through the labyrinth of Biden paywalls and find how much money was rerouted into Biden coffers. And then they must additionally compare what came into the Biden hands with a) what the family reported on their respective income tax returns, and b) whether their various properties and lifestyles were remotely possible without such massive hidden income. And getting bank records from the Bidens will be near impossible.

 

The U.S. Government Cancels DEEP VZN

dailymail  |  US officials are quietly shutting down a taxpayer-funded $125million project to hunt for new viruses due to fears it could spark another pandemic. 

DEEP VZN - pronounced deep vision - was launched in October 2021 with the aim of finding and studying novel pathogens in wildlife in Asia, Africa and Latin America. 

While the research was meant to prevent human outbreaks and pandemics, critics, including Biden administration officials, are afraid it could do the opposite and have voiced their fears about the potentially 'catastrophic risks' of virus hunting.

And their concerns are amplified due to the growing suspicion Covid emerged from an American-sponsored lab in Wuhan, China - a theory the FBI subscribes to.

The project was meant to run until 2026, but DEEP VZN was shut down without a formal public announcement in July 2023.

USAID's DEEP VZN (pronounced deep vision) project was hunting viruses among wildlife in Asia , Africa and Latin America.

While this is the most recent to come to light, it is far from the first research the US has conducted on this matter. 

For more than a decade the government has funded international projects aimed at identifying exotic viruses among wildlife that could infect humans someday, sending millions to support various similar projects. 

Money has flown overseas from the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

DEEP VZN, which stands for Discovery & Exploration of Emerging Pathogens - Viral Zoonoses, was launched by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in October 2021 and less than two years later, USAID officials informed members of Senate committees with jurisdiction over DEEP VZN the program was being shut down. 

The premature closure of the project came abruptly and was privately relayed to Senate aides by the office of Atul Gawande, USAID's assistant administrator for global health.

The news was buried in a congressional budget document hundreds of pages long and was discussed during interviews Mr William conducted with federal lawmakers and researchers. 

A scientist at the center of the Covid lab leak theory has admitted he cannot rule out the possibility the virus escaped a Chinese research facility.

At its launch, USAID said the 'ambitious new project' was meant to work with partner countries and the global community to 'build better preparedness for future global health threats.'

The organization said the project would 'strengthen global capacity to detect and understand the risks of viral spillover from wildlife to humans that could cause another pandemic.

'The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how infectious diseases threaten all of society, up-ending people's lives and attacking societies at their cores. 

'It is also a strong reminder of the connection between animals, humans, and the environment, and the effect that an emerging pathogen spilling over into humans can have on people's health and on global economies.'

The project was being carried out by scientists from the Washington State University Paul Allen School for Global Health among other research and partner entities. 

The goal was to collect more than 800,000 samples over the five-year period, mostly from wildlife, to identify a subset of 'previously unknown' viruses that 'pose a significant pandemic threat.'

The university sought to detect 12,000 new viruses throughout the program's run and scientists hoped the information would not only help prevent future pandemics, but also better prepare health officials if one did emerge. 

'DEEP VZN is a critical next step in the evolution of USAID's work to understand and address the risks posed by zoonotic diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans.'

However, in a statement regarding the closure of the program, USAID said it had determined the research was 'not an agency global health security priority at this time' and its decision reflected 'the relative risks and impact of our programming.'

 

 

Meade Layne Memorandum To The FBI On The Day Of The Roswell Crash

kookscience |   Memorandum 6751 is an informal designation for a Borderland Sciences Research Associates (BSRA) document entitled "A MEMORANDUM OF IMPORTANCE" that was sent to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1947. It was authored by Meade Layne, who was the BSRA's director and main editor of the group's The Round Robin and The Flying Roll newsletters. The document has been described as having been "classified" by the FBI since its receipt and was released to the public as part of an overall federal government declassification program; however, it was certainly distributed through BSRA freely, and the information contained in the document was frequently written about by Layne and his associates in newsletters and mimeographs.

The number 6751 appears to have been stamped on the document at the time of receipt, but does not seem to be an official document number.

- A MEMORANDUM OF IMPORTANCE -

San Diego, California. July 8, 1947 -

(For your Information)

- A MEMORANDUM OF IMPORTANCE -

THIS MEMORANDUM is respectfully addressed to certain scientists of distinction, to important aeronautical and military authorities, to a number of public officials and to a few publications.

The writer has little expectation that anything of import will be accomplished by this gesture. The mere fact that the data herein were obtained by so-called supernormal means is probably sufficient to insure its disregard by nearly all the persons addressed; nevertheless it seems a public duty to make it available. (The present writer has several university degrees and was formerly a university department head).

A very serious situation may develop at any time with regard to the "flying saucers." If one of those should be attacked, the attacking plane will almost certainly be destroyed. In the public mind this might create near panic and international suspicion. The principal data concerning these craft is now at hand and must be offered, no matter how fantastic and unintelligible it may seem to minds not previously instructed in thinking of this type.

1. Part of the disks carry crews, others are under remote control.
2. Their mission is peaceful. The visitors contemplate settling on this plane.
3. These visitors are human-like but much larger in size.

4. They are NOT excarnate earth people, but come from their own world.
5. They do NOT come from any "planet" as we use the word, but from an etheric planet which interpenetrates with our own and is not perceptible to use.
6. The bodies of the visitors, and the craft also, automatically "materialize" on entering the vibratory rate of our dense matter. (Cp. "apports.")

7. The disks possess a type of radiant energy, or a ray, which will easily disintegrate any attacking ship. They reenter the etheric at will, and so simply disappear from our vision, without trace.
8. The region from which they come is NOT the "astral plane", but corresponds to the Lokas or Talas. Students of esoteric matters will understand these terms.
9. They probably cannot be reached by radio, but probably can be by radar, if a signal system can be devised for that apparatus.

We give information and warning, and can do no more. Let the newcomers be treated with every kindness. Unless the disks are withdrawn, a [illegible] [illegible] with which our culture and science are incapable of dealing. A heavy responsibility rests upon the few in authority who are able to understand this matter.

Addendum: The Lokas are oval shape, fluted length in - oval with a heat-resisting metal or alloy not yet known; the front edge contains the controls; the middle portion is a laboratory; the rear contains armament, which consists essentially of a powerful [illegible] energy apparatus, perhaps a ray apparatus [illegible].

Note that, in addition to some illegible text caused partially by later hand writing and stamping, the name and signature of Meade Layne have been redacted. A scanned copy of the "Memorandum" is included on page 22 of UFO Part 1 of 16, https://vault.fbi.gov/UFO/UFO%20Part%201%20of%2016

FBI Data On Active Shootings Is Inaccurate And Political

realclearwire  | Americans are constantly debating policing and gun control. But to discuss these issues, we have to depend on government crime data. Unfortunately, politics has infected the data handling of agencies such as the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control.

Last year, the CDC became the center of controversy when it removed its estimates of defensive gun uses from its website at the request of gun control organizations. For nearly a decade the CDC cited a 2013 National Academies of Sciences report showing that the annual number of people using guns to stop crime ranged from about 64,000 to 3 million. The CDC website listed the upper figure at 2.5 million.

Mark Bryant, who runs the Gun Violence Archive, wrote to CDC officials after a meeting last year that the 2.5 million number “has been used so often to stop [gun control] legislation.” The CDC’s estimates were subsequently taken down and now lists no numbers.

The FBI is also susceptible to political pressure. Up until January of 2021, I worked in the U.S. Department of Justice as the senior advisor for research and statistics, and part of my job was to evaluate the FBI’s active shooting reports. I showed the bureau that many cases were missing and that others had been misidentified. Yet, the FBI continues to report that armed citizens stopped only 14 of the 302 active shooter incidents that it identified for the period 2014-2022. The correct rate is almost eight times higher. And if we limit the discussion to places where permit holders were allowed to carry, the rate is eleven times higher.

The FBI defines active shooter incidents as those in which an individual actively kills or attempts to kill people in a populated, public area. But it does not include shootings that are deemed related to other criminal activity, such as robbery or fighting over drug turf. Active shootings may involve just one shot being fired at just one target, even if the target isn’t hit. 

To compile its list, the FBI hired academics at the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University. Police departments don’t collect data, so the researchers had to find news stories about these incidents.

It isn’t surprising that people will miss cases or occasionally misidentify them when using news stories, but the FBI was unwilling to fix its errors when I pointed them out. My organization, the Crime Prevention Research Center, has found many more missed cases and is keeping an updated list. Back in 2015, I published a list of missed cases in a criminology publication.

The "Joe Biden Show" Is The Worst Scandal In American Political History

kunstler  |  Beach boy “Joe Biden” will be well-rested when the plan for his impeachment rolls out after Labor Day. Just because you’re not hearing any news about it now, with the county fairs on all over the USA, and the pols busy scarfing corn-dogs and kissing heifers, doesn’t mean that the key players aren’t confabbing among themselves. Hey, have you noticed, you’re hardly hearing about anything else these dwindling days of summer, either? Got any idea what’s up with that war in Ukraine? Of course you don’t.

    A preview for you then: Rep James Comer’s House Oversight Committee has already assembled a bundle of evidence tracking the exact ways and means of how the Biden family’s global bribery operation worked. That includes the bank records, the emails and deal memos, the chronology of meetings, the FBI documents, the phone recordings, the photos of “JB” schmoozing with Hunter’s “clients,” and the famous video of “Joe Biden” bragging onstage at the Council on Foreign Relations about how he strong-armed Ukraine President Poroshenko into firing General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin.

   Next, Speaker McCarthy has to form an actual impeachment inquiry committee. (If he tries to demur, there could be a new Speaker of the House in short order.) That committee will entertain witnesses, including figures in Justice Department who have been reluctant to discuss these matters previously. This might entail a Part B of the inquiry: the blatant obstructions of justice by DOJ officials in the long-running case on various charges against Hunter Biden, as supervised by federal attorney in Delaware, now Special Counsel, David Weiss. Mr. Weiss dawdled so strenuously for five years that he let the statute of limitations run out on the major tax evasion charges, while he ignored all the allegations of Hunter’s FARA violations in seeking money from officials of many foreign governments.

     There’s reason to believe that botching that case was well-coordinated with help from the Biden family DOJ “mole,” one Alexander S. Mackler, who had served as Senator Joe Biden’s press secretary in 2007-08, was campaign manager in 2010 for the Senator’s son, Beau Biden (deceased 2015), when he ran for Delaware Attorney General, and from 2014-16 was Deputy Counsel to Veep Joe Biden. Mr. Mackler was later inserted into the Delaware US attorney’s office as a prosecutor under David Weiss, from August 2016 to May 2019, while Hunter B’s case was under investigation. Did he function as the Bidens’ consigliere? Mr. Mackler was logged-in as a White House visitor five times after “Joe Biden” came to occupy it in 2021. Mr. Mackler is alleged to be currently serving as Chief Deputy Attorney General of Delaware (since 2019), but his name has been scrubbed by the agency’s website. See for yourself: https://attorneygeneral.delaware.gov

      Perhaps all this will be reserved for the separate impeachments of Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Wray. Bribery, racketeering, and treason may be enough for a presidential impeachment. Would the gravity of an impeachment proceeding override witnesses’ refusal to testify on the grounds of “an ongoing investigation?” How could it not, if those investigations are themselves a subject of the inquiry? Would the mainstream news media ignore the spectacle to suppress it? They can try, and then maybe we’ll get a test of how irrelevant they’ve become. The House will surely televise the proceedings. There are too many other alt.channels that will broadcast impeachment hearings, probably led by X (formerly Twitter).

    All of which raises the question: will “Joe Biden” really endure this ordeal? Or will the next thirty days be his window for exiting the scene? He is, after all, a mere prop in a show directed by others. Those others would include Barack Obama, who could easily be dragged into an inquiry about the Biden family’s criminal adventures in global money-grubbbing when Joe was Veep. How is it possible that President Obama didn’t know what the Bidens were up to? (The Intel Community can’t be that incompetent.) You see how ugly this thing could get?

Ken Klippenstein Wrote About The DoD Office Of Information And Perception Management (IPMO)

theintercept  |   While perception management involves denying, or blocking, propaganda, it can also entail advancing the U.S.’s own narrative. The Defense Department defines perception management in its official dictionary as “[a]ctions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning.” This is the part that has, historically, tended to raise the public’s skepticism of the Pentagon’s work.

The term “perception management” hearkens back to the Reagan administration’s attempts to shape the narrative around the Contras in Nicaragua. The Reagan administration sought to kick what his Vice President George H.W. Bush would later call the “Vietnam syndrome,” which it believed was driving American public opposition to support for the Contras. Ronald Reagan’s CIA director, William Casey, directed the agency’s leading propaganda specialist to oversee an interagency effort to portray the Contras — who had been implicated in grisly atrocities — as noble freedom fighters.

“An elaborate system of inter-agency committees was eventually formed and charged with the task of working closely with private groups and individuals involved in fundraising, lobbying campaigns and propagandistic activities aimed at influencing public opinion and governmental action,” an unpublished draft chapter of Congress’s investigation into Iran-Contra states. (Democrats dropped the chapter in order to get several Republicans to sign the report.)

The Smith-Mundt Act, passed in 1948 in the wake of the Second World War, prohibits the the State Department from disseminating “public diplomacy” — i.e., propaganda — domestically, instead requiring that those materials be targeted at foreign audiences. The Defense Department considered itself bound by this requirement as well.

After the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon triggered backlash after U.S. propaganda was disseminated in the U.S. In 2004, the military signaled that it had begun its siege on Fallujah. Just hours later, CNN discovered that this was not true.

But in 2012, the law was amended to allow propaganda to be circulated domestically, under the bipartisan Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, introduced by Reps. Adam Smith, D-Wash., and Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, which was later rolled into the National Defense Authorization Act.

“Proponents of amending these two sections argue that the ban on domestic dissemination of public diplomacy information is impractical given the global reach of modern communications, especially the Internet, and that it unnecessarily prevents valid U.S. government communications with foreign publics due to U.S. officials’ fear of violating the ban,” a congressional research service report said at the time of the proposed amendments. “Critics of lifting the ban state that it may open the door to more aggressive U.S. government activities to persuade U.S. citizens to support government policies, and might also divert the focus of State Department and the BBG [Broadcasting Board of Governors] communications from foreign publics, reducing their effectiveness.”

The Obama administration subsequently approved a highly classified covert action finding designed to counter foreign malign influence activities, a finding renewed and updated by the Biden administration, as The Intercept has reported.

The IPMO memo produced for the academic institution hints at its role in such propagandistic efforts now. “Among other things, the IPMO is tasked with the development of broad thematic messaging guidance and specific strategies for the execution of DoD activities designed to influence foreign defense-related decision-makers to behave in a manner beneficial to U.S. interests,” the memo states.

As the global war on terror draws to a close, the Pentagon has turned its attention to so-called great power adversaries like Russia and China. Following Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election, which in part involved state-backed efforts to disseminate falsehoods on social media, offices tasked with combating disinformation started springing up all over the U.S. government, as The Intercept has reported.

The director of national intelligence last year established a new center to oversee all the various efforts, including the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Foreign Influence Task Force and the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force.

The Pentagon’s IPMO differs from the others in one key respect: secrecy. Whereas most of the Department of Homeland Security’s counter-disinformation efforts are unclassified in nature — as one former DHS contractor not authorized to speak publicly explained to The Intercept — the IPMO involves a great deal of highly classified work.

That the office’s work goes beyond simple messaging into the rarefied world of intelligence is clear from its location within the Pentagon hierarchy. “The Influence and Perception Management Office will serve as the senior advisor to the USD(I&S) [Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security] for strategic operational influence and perception management (reveal and conceal) matters,” the budget notes.

When asked about the intelligence community’s counter-disinformation efforts, Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress this month, “I think DIA’s perspective on this, senator, is really speed: We want to be able to detect that and it’s really with our open-source collection capability working with our combatant command partners where this is happening all over the world — and then the ability to turn something quickly with them, under the right authorities, to counter that disinformation, misinformation.”

Zelensky Has Blackmail Leverage Over Biden

thegatewaypundit  |  Author Peter Schweizer went on with Jesse Watters on Monday night where he proceeded to drop another bomb on the Biden Crime Family.

According to Schweizer, who wrote a best-seller “Secret Empires” on the Biden Family crimes, told Jesse that one of Vlodomyr Zelensky’s top officials was sitting in the room when they were discussing bribing the Bidens, Joe and Hunter.

Ukrainian President Zelensky has a top official who was sitting in on meetings where they talked about bribing the Bidens.

Schweizer suggests Zelensky is using this as leverage over the Biden regime for weapons and billions in US dollars.

Peter Schweizer: We’ve been at this since 2018.
** They initially said there were no foreign deals.
** Then they shifted and said there were. There might have been foreign deals, but the Bidens made no money.
** Then it became Joe Biden didn’t know about any of the deals.
** Then it became Joe Biden didn’t participate in any of the deals.
** And now it’s that he was not in business with his son.

Look, the implications for this are huge, Jesse.

If you look at that 1023 form that the FBI released, if that document is true, that document reveals that one of the people that was at those meetings that heard the conversations about bribing the Bidens worked for – President Zelensky. Who really wants to believe, if that meeting took place and that document is accurate, that that individual did not go and report to President Zelensky what he heard?

And again, if that document is true, who wants to believe that President Zelensky and his administration have not used that as leverage over Joe Biden when it comes to negotiations on Ukraine policy?

We may all have to start learning the Ukrainian word for compromise because this is a very clear indication of how this has shaped this administration’s policy towards Ukraine and also towards China.

It is also convenient for Zelensky that there is not a team of US auditors in his country tracking where all of this money went.

 

 

The Hour Is Late For Joe Biden

JUST IN: Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer is set to testify this week that Joe Biden was deeply involved with Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings, attending meetings both over the phone and in person.

Despite all of the growing evidence Biden is still… pic.twitter.com/MNrlaTA9k1

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 24, 2023

kunstler.com  |      The hour is late for “Joe Biden.” His sojourn in America’s highest office was one long twilight of pretending to be effectual, or merely present, and now even that abject pantomime slips into a place of nullity, where all is still and dark. What does he do these languorous weekends at the fabled Delaware beach house? Stare out at the empty Atlantic horizon over an uneaten egg salad sandwich with the crusts cut off? Does he even suspect that the world is already turning without him?

      The pressure is mounting for some group of somebodies to arrange his exit from the scene. Of course, there is no public discussion of that among the somebodies because everything they have been doing for years happens sub rosa, in addition to being of dubious legality. Despite the most formidable praetorian protections — a depraved justice department, a Gestapo-caliber FBI, a debauched news media — the arrows of culpability are flying clean through the beach house windows at that immobilized figure sitting in the crepuscular gloom.

RFK JR ON BIDEN: “I think the issues are now coming up are worrying enough that we really need a real investigation… these revelations where you had Burisma, which is a notoriously corrupt company that paid out, apparently, $10M to Hunter and his dad”pic.twitter.com/5Tx3J3fCJx

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) July 25, 2023

     Forgive me for bringing this up, but remember the first impeachment of Mr. Trump on the grounds of a phone call to freshly-minted President Z in Ukraine pertaining to some fishy matters around the Burisma gas company? Yes, Mr. T was impeached over a mere inquiry into possible misconduct by a former high US official (being one “Joe Biden,” ex-veep) and his bag-man son. The setup was patently obvious even to us bloggers who enjoy no intimate correspondence with organelles of the DC Blob. A CIA spook “whistleblower” named Eric Ciaramella (sssshhhh) was injected into the scene with help from the devious Col. Vindman at NSA and an assist from Intel Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson… and voila! Recall the solemn pageantry of Nancy Pelosi’s march across the Capitol rotunda with the hallowed bill of impeachment on a satin pillow….

     And now, more than three years later, the nation is informed of all the particulars around those Burisma Company’s doings with the Biden family in granular detail ($5-million plus $5-million), laying out just one instance of treasonous moneygrubbing by this family among many grifts in other nations. And in case of any lingering questions — if the news media were not a pseudopod of the Blob — a long roster of bank transfer records has been assembled by Rep. Comer of the House Oversight Committee to validate the deal memos, emails and audio recordings already available for inspection in the alt.news.

    You realize, don’t you, that the DOJ and the FBI had all of this info (a.k.a evidence) in its possession even before Trump impeachment number one? AG William Barr and FBI Director Wray could have stepped up at any time after October, 2019, and said, “Oh, here’s what that phone call to Z was about.” That they didn’t is arguably the most blatant crime among scores of crimes committed by the Blob in the Trump and post-Trump years.

Federal Justice Manual 9-5.000, Section B: Constitutional obligation to ensure a fair trial and disclose material exculpatory and impeachment evidence. Government disclosure of material exculpatory and impeachment evidence is part of the constitutional guarantee to a fair trial. Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 87 (1963). The law requires the disclosure of exculpatory and impeachment evidence when such evidence is material to guilt or punishment.”

    So now the Blob is desperate to jettison this embodiment of its corruption and lawlessness, “Joe Biden,” before the Trump-deranged masses start paying attention to the distant yelling from the asteroid belt of actual news beyond noisy Planet MSNBC. The Blob will be fighting for its very life anyway. The Ukraine operation is not proceeding according to plan. Do you know why? Answer: because it was a stupid plan concocted by purblind Neocon idiots. Russia has been insulted to the degree that it deems America unworthy of negotiation — meaning Russia will bring the Ukraine mess to a conclusion on its terms. They will take care to do it gingerly, so as not to further inflame the psychosis afflicting America and tempt us into even grosser stupidities. Namely, they will insist on a neutral Ukraine with no foreign operators in it and some rearrangement of Ukraine’s borders. America will have to lump it. The Blob Neocon faction will blame the whole lamentable affair on “Joe Biden,” who, by then, will be gone from the White House.

     How does that happen? The 25^th Amendment, since we are now at the point where his infirmity is as hard to ignore as the evidence of his crimes. How the Blob deals with his successor, the distressing Ms. Harris, is another bridge to cross. The switcheroo itself may be enough to tank the financial markets, which will give the restive nation something else to think about: the personal ruin of every household in the land. Then, things get really interesting.

---

I Was Unaware That JFK Had Ordered The CIA To Share All Its UFO Secrets With NASA

popularmechanics  | President Joe Biden has announced that he has completed his “final certification” of files to be released regarding John F. Kennedy’s assassination, even though 4,684 documents are still kept secret in whole or in part.

The National Archives has already released thousands of confidential documents related to the November 1963 assassination of then-president Kennedy. The documents include information from the CIA, FBI, State Department, and other agencies on topics such as assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s contacts with Soviet and Cuban officials, anonymous tips and threats, and investigations into the shooting itself.

One of the newly released documents revealed the name of the CIA official who intercepted Oswald’s mail in the months before JFK’s killing: Reuben Efron. It turns out Efron had a UFO encounter in 1955 when he was on a train journey through the Soviet Union with Senator Richard Russell, Democrat of Georgia, and an Army colonel. They all saw what a CIA report called two “flying saucers,” though skeptics later argued that they were Soviet aircraft. Russell was among the Warren Commission members who interviewed Marina Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald’s wife, in 1964.

Some conspiracy theorists see a connection between Efron and the Kennedy assassination and wonder if he knew more than he let on. They also hope that a bipartisan bill to declassify UFO records will reveal more about the government’s knowledge and involvement in unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs).

“People say there’s nothing significant in these files?” Jefferson Morley, the editor of the blog JFK Facts, told The New York Times. “Bingo! Here’s the guy who was reading Oswald’s mail, a detail they failed to share until now. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to think it’s suspicious.”

 Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is backing a bipartisan bill that would unveil government records on so-called UFOs and unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs). The bill would amend the National Defense Authorization Act and require the federal government to compile all records on UAPs and share them with the public, unless a review board justifies keeping them secret.

Thank GAWD Brandon An'em Protecting Our "Cognitive Infrastructure"

tablet  |  My fellow citizens, meet the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency—better known as CISA—a government acronym with the same word in it twice in case you wondered about its mission. This agency was created in the waning days of the Obama administration, supposedly to protect our digital infrastructure against cyberattacks from computer viruses and nefarious foreign actors. But less than one year into their existence, CISA decided that their remit also should include protecting our “cognitive infrastructure” from various threats.

“Cognitive infrastructure” is the actual phrase used by current CISA head Jen Easterly, who formerly worked at Tailored Access Operations, a top secret cyber warfare unit at the National Security Agency. It refers to the thoughts inside your head, which is precisely what the government’s counter-disinformation apparatus, headed by people like Easterly, are attempting to control. Naturally, these thoughts need to be protected from bad ideas, such as any ideas that the people at CISA or their government partners do not like.

In early 2017, citing the threat from foreign disinformation, the Department of Homeland Security unilaterally declared federal control over the country’s election infrastructure, which had previously been administered at the local level. Not long after that, CISA, which is a subagency of the DHS, established its own authority over the cognitive infrastructure by becoming the central hub coordinating the government’s information control activities. This pattern was repeated in several other government agencies around the same time (there are currently a dozen federal agencies named among the defendants in our suit).

So, what exactly has the government been doing to protect our cognitive infrastructure? Perhaps the best way to wrap your head around the actual operations of the new American censorship leviathan is to consider the vivid analogy offered by our brilliant attorney, John Sauer, in the introduction of our brief for the injunction. This is worth quoting at length:

Suppose that the Trump White House, backed by Republicans controlling both Houses of Congress, publicly demanded that all libraries in the United States burn books criticizing the President, and the President made statements implying that the libraries would face ruinous legal consequences if they did not comply, while senior White House officials privately badgered the libraries for detailed lists and reports of such books that they had burned and the libraries, after months of such pressure, complied with those demands and burned the books.

Suppose that, after four years of pressure from senior congressional staffers in secret meetings threatening the libraries with adverse legislation if they did not cooperate, the FBI started sending all libraries in the United States detailed lists of the books the FBI wanted to burn, requesting that the libraries report back to the FBI by identifying the books that they burned, and the libraries complied by burning about half of those books.

Suppose that a federal national security agency teamed up with private research institutions, backed by enormous resources and federal funding, to establish a mass-surveillance and mass-censorship program that uses sophisticated techniques to review hundreds of millions of American citizens’ electronic communications in real time, and works closely with tech platforms to covertly censor millions of them.

The first two hypotheticals are directly analogous to the facts of this case. The third, meanwhile, is not a hypothetical at all; it is a description of the Election Integrity Partnership and Virality Project.

The censorship activities of the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, which it terms “information warfare,” have turned the FBI, in the words of whistleblower Steve Friend, into an “intelligence agency with law enforcement powers.” But there is no “information warfare” exception to the constitutional right of free speech. Which other federal agencies are involved in censorship? Besides the ones you might suspect—the DOJ, NIH, CDC, Surgeon General, and the State Department—our case has also uncovered censorship activities by the Department of the Treasury (don’t criticize the feds’ monetary policies), and yes, my friends, even the Census Bureau (don’t ask).

In prior precedent-setting cases on censorship, the Supreme Court clarified that the right of free speech guaranteed by the Constitution exists not just for the person speaking but for the listener as well: We all have the right to hear both sides of debated issues to make informed judgments. Thus all Americans have been harmed by the government’s censorship leviathan, not just those who happen to post opinions or share information on social media.

The judge presiding over the case, Terry Dougherty, asked on Friday in court if anyone had read George Orwell’s 1984 and whether they remembered the Ministry of Truth. “It’s relevant here,” he added. It is indeed time to slay the government’s Ministry of Truth. I hope that our efforts in Missouri v. Biden prove to be a crucial first step in this project to restore our constitutional rights.

 

Federal Judge Puts His Size 13 Triple E Brogans Deep In Brandons Shit Stained Behind....,

ZH  |  On Tuesday, the Fourth of July, a federal judge in Louisiana kicked the Biden administration's censorship complex in the teeth - ruling that federal officials (with limited exception) can no longer communicate or collude with big tech companies to censor "protected speech."

 The order prohibits Biden officials from "collaborating, coordinating, partnering, switchboarding, and/or jointly working with" key academic groups behind various censorship campaigns, including the Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of researchers led by the Stanford Internet Observatory and the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public.

This is a huge win for free speech - and comes on the heels of Twitter Files revelations of government influence and control over various hot button narratives they wished to steer. And of all people who deserve to take a victory lap - journalist Matt Taibbi and Louisiana AG Andrew Baily have opined on the ruling.

First, Taibbi drops his thoughts via Racket News...

Here’s how federal judge Terry Doughty yesterday described the digital censorship controversy at which pundits a half-year now have repeatedly rolled eyes, dismissed, and mocked as a nothingburger: “If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”

Doughty then ordered a sweeping halt to the censorship schemes outlined in both the extant Missouri v. Biden lawsuit and in the Twitter Files. Critics who’ve been snickering about this issue might want to read this 155-page ruling now, and ask themselves if the current Supreme Court would or would not agree with Doughty. Still think this is a nothingburger?

With this ruling in the Missouri v. Biden censorship case, Doughty went out of his way on the Fourth of July, to issue a stern rebuke at a conga line of government officials, many of them characters in the Twitter Files. Racket readers will recognize names like Elvis Chan and Laura Dehmlow (of the FBI), Jen Easterly and Brian Scully (of the Department of Homeland Security), Laura Rosenberger (Special Assistant to the President, and one of the creators of Hamilton 68) and Daniel Kimmage (of the Global Engagement Center), who were all just ordered to get the hell off the First Amendment’s lawn. Paraphrasing, Doughty enjoined them from:

• meeting with social-media companies for the purpose of pressuring or inducing in any manner the removal or suppression of protected free speech;

• flagging posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding to social-media companies urging the same;

• collaborating with the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any “like project” or group for the same purpose;

• threatening or coercing social-media companies to remove protected free speech.

The New York Times, which instantly wrung its hands and stressed the ruling could “curtail efforts to fight disinformation,” grumblingly handed blame to the Twitter Files, without naming them of course, and mislabeling it as a partisan enterprise:

Elon Musk has echoed Republican arguments, releasing internal company documents to chosen journalists suggesting what they claimed was collusion between company and government officials. Though that remains far from proven, some of the documents Mr. Musk disclosed ended up in the lawsuit’s arguments.

The investigation led by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and Missouri’s Andrew Bailey, produced documents showing overt government requests to censor people like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a White House official expressing frustration to Facebook that they weren’t “removing bad information from search,” and emails in which a Facebook official pleads with the White House to understand that they’re already “reducing the virality” of “often-true content” that might promote vaccine hesitancy, among many other things. The Attorneys General likewise scored depositions with people like Dr. Anthony Fauci, and confronted him with documents showing Facebook sending his office updates about how “we are expanding the list of false claims we will remove.”

White House official asks Twitter “if we can get moving” on having posts by RFK, Jr. removed, “ASAP”

Was this illegal? Unconsititional? Did it show a pattern of mighty tech companies like Facebook and Twitter acting like they were reporting to federal officials like Fauci on content moderation? I knew what I thought it looked like, but what judges or a jury might say, who knew?

 

 

What The NYTimes Wrote About A Judge Protecting First Amendment Rights

startribune  | A federal judge in Louisiana on Tuesday restricted the Biden administration from communicating with social media platforms about broad swaths of content online, a ruling that could curtail efforts to combat false and misleading narratives about the coronavirus pandemic and other issues.

The order, which could have significant First Amendment implications, is a major development in a fierce legal fight over the boundaries and limits of speech online.

It was a victory for Republicans who have often accused social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube of disproportionately taking down right-leaning content, sometimes in collaboration with government. Democrats say the platforms have failed to adequately police misinformation and hateful speech, leading to dangerous outcomes, including violence.

In the ruling, Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana said that parts of the government, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI, could not talk to social media companies for "the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression or reduction of content containing protected free speech."

In granting a preliminary injunction, Doughty said that the agencies could not flag specific posts to the social media platforms or request reports about their efforts to take down content. The ruling said that the government could still notify the platforms about posts detailing crimes, national security threats or foreign attempts to influence elections.

"If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States' history," the judge said. "The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the government has used its power to silence the opposition."

Courts are increasingly being forced to weigh in on such issues — with the potential to upend decades of legal norms that have governed speech online.

The Republican attorneys general of Texas and Florida are defending first-of-their-kind state laws that bar internet platforms from taking down certain political content, and legal experts believe those cases may eventually reach the Supreme Court. The high court this year declined to limit a law that allows the platforms to escape legal liability for content that users post to the sites.

The ruling Tuesday, in a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri, is likely to be appealed by the Biden administration, but its impact could force government officials, including law enforcement agencies, to refrain from notifying the platforms of troublesome content.

Government officials have argued they do not have the authority to order posts or entire accounts removed, but federal agencies and the tech giants have long worked together to take action against illegal or harmful material, especially in cases involving child sexual abuse, human trafficking and other criminal activity. That has also included regular meetings to share information on the Islamic State and other terrorist groups.

The White House said the Justice Department was reviewing the ruling and evaluating its next steps."Our consistent view remains that social media platforms have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects their platforms are having on the American people, but make independent choices about the information they present," the White House said in a statement.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, declined to comment. Twitter did not have a comment, and Google did not respond to a request for comment.

Jeff Landry, the Louisiana attorney general, said in a statement that the judge's order was "historic." Missouri's attorney general, Andrew Bailey, hailed the ruling as a "huge win in the fight to defend our most fundamental freedoms." Both officials are Republican.