There’s just something very sketchy about this public release of information from Judge Merchan in New York City. Merchan doesn’t have an integrity bone and the comment he is bringing attention toward is innocuous and random. However, Merchan could be trying to get Trump to violate the gag order aspect and talk about jurors; thereby making the sentencing worse.
According to information Merchan is providing the lawyers in the Trump case, a comment was made on the court’s FaceBook page indicating one of the jurors said the Trump guilty verdict was predetermined. [SOURCE] “My cousin is a juror and says Trump is getting convicted. Thank you folks for all your hard work!!!”
Why would Judge Merchan want to draw public attention to this?
Either something bigger is being diluted by this story, or perhaps Merchan is using it as a provocation to get Trump to talk about the jury and violate his gag order ahead of sentencing.
Or, perhaps Merchan is looking to create a mistrial to exit the case, or do it over again and extend the gag order. Also, why not include the entire quote from the Facebook Page:
In his letter to Trump’s lawyers and the DA’s office regarding the shady comment, Merchan did NOT mention any sort of investigation into the matter.
A lot of people are calling this one of President Trump’s greatest interviews; if not – perhaps the best ever.
Dr. Phil had a lengthy interview with President Trump, drilling down on how Trump deals with being the target of so much vitriol, hatred and weaponized targeting from every facet of the American system of government. I think the interview is being well received because the questions go beyond talking about the details of the targeting and focus on the emotional part of how President Trump and his family deal with it.
These are the types of questions that ordinary supporters of the MAGA effort would likely ask President Trump. WATCH:
As a former U.S. Ambassador for President Trump, I have witnessed more corruption than most people can imagine. President Trump was right when he said that the true threat to the Republican Party is the enemy from within.
During my tenure as ambassador, China was unleashing bioweapons, and I was criticized for fighting back. I was unanimously confirmed to my position and I have donated millions and volunteered countless hours to serve Republican leadership. I even contributed to Senate election chief Steve Daines, and he had no problem accepting my money.
For 17 years, I have sat on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition. I have treated cancer patients, saving the lives of children, veterans, family, and friends. I know exactly what it’s like to fight outside enemies. But what this race has taught me is that the enemy fighting from within is more dangerous than any adversary.
I declared my candidacy in July of 2023, poised to start strong. Then, I received a call from my general consultant informing me that they received a threat from the NRSC, threatening to pull over $20 million of business from the group if they continued to support me. Consequently, they abandoned me. A similar call came from my friends at the RJC, who received similar threats. We lost vendors, donors, and belief in the system.
But we fought on and gained ground. The harder we fought, the more corruption we encountered. Republicans, heavily led by the NRSC RINO Swamp, spent more time and money fighting me than fighting Democrats. They insulted my patients and even suggested I needed professional help. They called me a crackpot and a weirdo.
I’ve always said that President Trump is the Deep State’s worst enemy. They know this, and so they work tirelessly to keep him down. And just like President Trump, I won’t be fazed by these efforts.
The level of corruption and betrayal I have seen from within the party is staggering. It’s not just about money or power; it’s about a complete disregard for the principles and values that we, as Republicans, are supposed to stand for. The NRSC and other party elites have shown that they are more interested in maintaining their control and influence than in supporting candidates who genuinely want to make a difference. They support a candidate who stole money from the people of Nevada to pay off his own debts through a “Scam” PAC. A ghost candidate who refuses to debate and is down 14 points in general election polls.
I have often wondered if this resistance is driven by antisemitism, as the NRSC hasn’t supported a Jewish candidate in decades, or if it’s simply because my record shows that I won’t be intimidated. They see my strength, my resilience, and my dedication to fighting for what is right, and they feel threatened. But Nevada, take note: I will never stop fighting.
When I become the next United States Senator from this great Silver State, the corruption ends on day one. I will work tirelessly to ensure that the voices of the people are heard and that the true values of our party are upheld.
The Republican Party is at a crossroads. It’s time to take a stand. It’s time to say enough is enough. We must hold our leaders accountable and demand that they put the interests of the people above their own. We must root out the corruption and ensure that our party is one that we can all be proud of.
I will continue to stand strong, to fight for what is right, and to represent the people of Nevada with honor and integrity. Together, we can bring about the change that we so desperately need. Together, we can restore the Republican Party to its true greatness. Thank you for your support, and God bless America.
Dr. Jeffrey Gunter, MD, is an American healthcare executive, philanthropist, diplomat, and former U.S. Ambassador serving as the 24th United States Ambassador to Iceland. He is currently a candidate for U.S. Senate in Nevada.
Russell Brand: “In a straight choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, if you care about democracy, if you care about freedom, I don’t know how you could do anything other than vote for Donald Trump.” pic.twitter.com/mBbkTXH8Wp
If America’s schools are to impart principles of freedom and democracy to future generations, they must start by respecting the constitutional rights of their students
Take the case of Lucas Hudson.
With all the negative press being written about today’s young people, it’s refreshing to meet a young person who not only knows his rights but is prepared to stand up for them.
Lucas is a smart kid, a valedictorian of his graduating class at the Collegiate Academy at Armwood High School in Hillsborough County, Fla.
So, when school officials gave Lucas an ultimatum: either remove most of his speech’s religious references from his graduation speech—in which he thanked the people who helped shape his character, reflected on how quickly time goes by, and urged people to use whatever time they have to love others and serve the God who loves us—or he would not be speaking at all, Lucas refused to forfeit his rights.
In coming to Lucas’ defense, attorneys for The Rutherford Institute warned school officials that their attempts to browbeat Lucas into watering down his graduation speech could expose the school to a First Amendment lawsuit.
Thankfully for Lucas, the school backed down, and he was able to deliver his speech as written.
It doesn’t always work out so well, unfortunately.
Over the course of The Rutherford Institute’s 42-year history, we have defended countless young people who found themselves censored, silenced and denied their basic First Amendment rights, especially when they chose to exercise their rights to free speech and religious freedom.
In case after case, we encounter an appalling level of ignorance on the part of public school officials who mistakenly believe that the law requires anything religious be banned from public schools.
Here’s where government officials get it wrong: while the government may not establish or compel a particular religion, it also may not silence and suppress religious speech merely because others might take offense.
People are free to ignore, disagree with, or counter the religious speech of others, but the government cannot censor private religious speech.
Unfortunately, you can only defend your rights when you know them, and the American people—and those who represent them—are utterly ignorant about their freedoms, history, and how the government is supposed to operate.
As Morris Berman points out in his book Dark Ages America, “70 percent of American adults cannot name their senators or congressmen; more than half don’t know the actual number of senators, and nearly a quarter cannot name a single right guaranteed by the First Amendment. Sixty-three percent cannot name the three branches of government. Other studies reveal that uninformed or undecided voters often vote for the candidate whose name and packaging (e.g., logo) are the most powerful; color is apparently a major factor in their decision.”
More than government corruption and ineptitude, police brutality, terrorism, gun violence, drugs, illegal immigration or any other so-called “danger” that threatens our nation, civic illiteracy may be what finally pushes us over the edge.
As Thomas Jefferson warned, no nation can be both ignorant and free.
Unfortunately, the American people have existed in a technology-laden, entertainment-fueled, perpetual state of cluelessness for so long that civic illiteracy has become the new normal for the citizenry.
Not even the government bureaucrats who are supposed to represent us know much about civics, American history and geography, or the Constitution although they take an oath to uphold, support and defend the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic.”
Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. The government’s purpose is to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.
It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.”
Those who founded this country knew quite well that every citizen must remain vigilant or freedom would be lost. As Thomas Paine recognized, “It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from its government.”
You have no rights unless you exercise them.
Still, you can’t exercise your rights unless you know what those rights are.
“If Americans do not understand the Constitution and the institutions and processes through which we are governed, we cannot rationally evaluate important legislation and the efforts of our elected officials, nor can we preserve the national unity necessary to meaningfully confront the multiple problems we face today,” warns the Brennan Center in its Civic Literacy Report Card. “Rather, every act of government will be measured only by its individual value or cost, without concern for its larger impact. More and more we will ‘want what we want, and [will be] convinced that the system that is stopping us is wrong, flawed, broken or outmoded.’”
Education precedes action.
As the Brennan Center concludes “America, unlike most of the world’s nations, is not a country defined by blood or belief. America is an idea, or a set of ideas, about freedom and opportunity. It is these ideas that bind us together as Americans and have kept us free, strong, and prosperous. But these ideas do not perpetuate themselves. They must be taught and learned anew with each generation.”
Lucas Hudson would have passed such a test with flying colors.
On graduation day, Lucas stepped up to the podium and delivered his uncensored valedictorian speech as written, without any interference by school censors.
As Lucas’s father relayed to The Rutherford Institute:
“In the end, Lucas got to give his entire speech the way he wanted to give it, and everybody was paying attention. Nobody got hurt. Nothing bad happened. It was just a young man using the First Amendment rights to speak his mind regarding his personal beliefs. [Lucas] never thought a few sentences in a speech would create such a controversy in his world, but this speech turned into a defining moment for him. He will never be the same after this experience, but this permanent change is a good thing. When it mattered, Lucas stood up for himself, and when those he stood up against tried to push him down, [The Rutherford Institute] came to his aide and backed him up to make it a fair fight. I am comforted to know you are defending the rights of the people. These fights matter. Every time you defend the rights of one person, you defend the rights of every person. You helped my son fight for his rights against the school, and, in doing so, Hillsborough County Public Schools will think twice before infringing on the rights of future students. Your defense of Lucas became an inspiration for the students in his school and sparked a healthy and meaningful debate among the teachers, students, and parents about the value of the First Amendment and the need for limits on government control over our personal beliefs. You are fighting for good and doing important work. Don’t ever stop. Thank you, Rutherford Institute, for being there for my son when he needed you most.”
America needs more freedom fighters like Lucas Hudson and The Rutherford Institute.
It’s up to us.
We have the power to make and break the government.
We the American people—the citizenry—are the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.
We must act—and act responsibly.
A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to make the sacrifices necessary to stay involved.
When the extreme leftists cannot get their way by manipulating the legal system through Lawfare, they come unglued.
The tribal leadership of Norm Eisen, Mary McCord, Andrew Weissmann and the larger Lawfare community have been waging an open media campaign against Florida Judge Aileen Cannon because in the Jack Smith documents case Judge Cannon is not giving them what they want.
It’s somewhat personal to the Lawfare crew because from the outset it has appeared that Eisen, McCord and Weissmann write the briefs and motions that Jack Smith files with the court. If the Lawfare effort is being rejected, dismissed or diluted by Judge Cannon, the Lawfare tribe takes it personal and make appearances on leftist media networks, broadcasts and social media telling their followers to file judicial complaints against her.
In response to what the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals calls an “orchestrated campaign,” Chief Judge William Pryor of the 11th CCA has published a blistering order [SEE HERE], informing the clerk of the court not to accept any more complaints and to trash them.
Making matters worse for the Lawfare pearl clutchers, Chief Justice Pryor tells the court’s clerk not to even respond to the complaints, just publish this order. In the larger message the 11th CCA is essentially telling the Lawfare activists to knock it off, and this approach can have profoundly negative implications for Jack Smith’s ability to use the appeals court as a tool to target Judge Cannon.
“The Chief Judge for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is putting an official end to the THOUSANDS OF COORDINATED COMPLAINTS against Judge Aileen Cannon. Democrats are totally hysterical when they can’t control a courtroom (or a SC Justice like Alito).” ~ Mark Mendlovitz
After we checked on Sunday following President Trump announcing his TikTok account he had 800,000 followers. Today at the same time he has over 3.8 million followers; that is a gain of approximately 3 million followers in the past 24 hours and growing.
Additionally, according to the Trump campaign and Eric Trump, donations have flooded into the campaign as the American public show their contempt for the judicial Lawfare with their wallets and support. As noted by Eric Trump approximately 30% of the donations came from people who had never donated to a political campaign before, and $70 million of the initial funds raised were small donors (under $250).
After Trump Verdict, Megyn Kelly Urges Republicans to Give Democrats “a Taste of Their Own Medicine”
Theme joined by others, including John Hinderaker at Powerline: “If Trump wins in November, his Department of Justice should immediately indict Biden, and Biden should be hounded until the day he dies or goes to prison, whichever happens first.”
The Trump guilty verdict has got many people on the right very angry and for good reasons. Some prominent voices are even calling for payback.
Now that Democrats believe this tactic is working, they will keep using it until it doesn’t work anymore. One of the only ways to make them understand why this is a bad thing, is to make it hurt for them.
Megyn Kelly understands this. She recently spoke about it on her podcast.
MEGYN KELLY: This whole scheme, and here it is the proper word is corrupt. It’s a before and after moment for America. What just happened today is a line we can’t uncross, and these Democrats will rue the day they decided to use lawfare to stop a presidential candidate.
I’m not talking about violence; I’m talking about tit for tat. You just wait, and it won’t be Hunter Biden next time; it’s going to be Joe Biden. It could potentially still be Barack Obama. It could still potentially be Hillary Clinton. We’re going to have to look at what the statutes of limitations are on the various crimes they surely committed.
We’re going to have to look at passing laws to revive those dead crimes, felonies, or misdemeanors so that those cases can be brought out of time. That’s what may be in the interest of justice, just like they did for E.J. Carroll with the New York State law that was passed so that she could sue him. That’s what happened.
Turnabout is fair play. And John Yoo, an amazing lawyer who worked in the Bush administration Department of Justice, has a great piece out today talking about how that’s the only way they’ll learn.
The only way to save the Republic now is to give them a taste of their own medicine. That’s it. That’s it. They tasted blood today. They’re the wolves with the bloody piece of meat in their mouths. That doesn’t stop the wolf from coming back for more. The only thing that will stop him is if he loses a limb of his own.
Watch the clip below:
🚨 NEW: Megyn Kelly suggests a reckoning is coming for Biden, Obama, and Clinton after Trump verdict.
“You just wait, and it won’t be Hunter Biden the next time. It’s going to be Joe Biden. It could potentially still be Barack Obama. It could still potentially be Hillary… pic.twitter.com/VCl9DxBKwL
The Federalist CEO Calls For Republicans to Draw Up Lists of Democrats to ‘Put in Prison’ After Trump Verdict
Sean Davis, the CEO and co-founder of the the right-wing website The Federalist, called on Republicans to draw up lists of Democrats to “put in prison” in a social media post reacting to Donald Trump’s conviction on Thursday evening.
“In 2016, the presidential race was decided based on candidates releasing lists of potential Supreme Court nominees,” wrote Davis. “In 2024, I want to see lists of which Democrat officials are going to be put in prison.”
“This is what happens when you cross the Rubicon,” he added.
In 2016, the presidential race was decided based on candidates releasing lists of potential Supreme Court nominees.
In 2024, I want to see lists of which Democrat officials are going to be put in prison.
If you’re a Republican running for office, you can just go ahead and throw away all of your elegant little policy proposals for this or that corporate exclusion or tax subsidy. Give me a list of which Democrat officials you’re going to put in prison, or get lost.
Even John Hinderaker over at Powerline is talking this way:
What to do now? First, it is now absolutely essential that Trump be elected president. The Democrats cannot be allowed to get away with this effort to turn America into a banana republic.
Second, the Democrats understand nothing except the raw exercise of power. Therefore, Republican attorneys general and district attorneys should bring criminal charges against Democratic officeholders wherever possible. No Democratic officeholder should be allowed to retire, in any jurisdiction with Republican law enforcement, without facing criminal charges. There can’t be a single Democratic official in America against whom a criminal case can’t be brought that is better than this case against Trump. It should be open season on Democrats in the criminal courts.
Third, the criminal prosecutions should begin with Joe Biden. Unlike Trump, Biden is actually a criminal. He is already known to be guilty under the federal bribery statute, to the tune of at least $20 million. If Trump wins in November, his Department of Justice should immediately indict Biden, and Biden should be hounded until the day he dies or goes to prison, whichever happens first.
We are no longer in the realm of William F. Buckley and intellectual discussions.
The Democrats have crossed a line, and they will not stop until they are forced to do so.
You’ve heard of a “win-win” scenario, right? Well clueless Democrats don’t understand it yet, but this New York Trump trial is the first-ever “win-win-win” scenario.
Trump can only win, or win, or win even bigger.
Let me explain. Please keep in mind, I’ve studied Donald J. Trump since I was a freshman at Columbia University in 1979. I’ve considered him my mentor in business and politics for over 40 years. And I’ve been right about everything I’ve predicted regarding Trump for a decade now (since he came down that escalator in 2015).
I even wrote the book on Trump titled, “TRUMP RULES: The Greatest Winner and Warrior in History!” That book came out AFTER Trump lost the 2020 election. I predicted, way back then, that Donald J. Trump would become the greatest “comeback kid” in world history, rise from the ashes, and against all odds, become the 47Th President of the United States.
How’s my prediction looking right now?
Trump is leading Biden in every poll. And leading by a wide margin in virtually every battleground state. The latest poll shows Trump beating Biden among black voters. I predicted this “Trump Miracle.” And now we’re all seeing it.
Here is why this New York Trump trial is a “win-win-win” no matter what the verdict is.
First, on the remote chance if Trump is acquitted, or much more likely receives a “hung jury,” it’s going to be one of the biggest wins in history for Trump.
Trump will be branded as unbeatable and unstoppable.
Not even a fake crime, a frame job, with a rigged judge with “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and a rigged jury filled with biased New York liberals, can beat Trump. He will be seen as super-human. So, there’s win number one. And it’s a big one. Historic. Legendary.
The Trump legend grows even bigger!
Second option, and much more likely, considering this is clearly a “communist show trial” that would make Stalin, or Mao, or Fidel Castro proud, set up from start-to-finish to find Trump guilty, no matter how absurd the charges, no matter how pathetic the case presented, no matter how embarrassing the witnesses.
So, let’s just assume the prearranged outcome becomes reality- sadly, tragically, Trump is found guilty. Trump is immediately put in handcuffs and led off to prison, if only for a few hours. Another infamous Trump mug shot is taken. Guess what…
This is an even bigger win.
Trump becomes an even bigger legend. Trump becomes an even bigger martyr. Trump’s base is shocked, angry, outraged- and motivated to vote like never before. They will come out to vote like warriors like cornered wolverines.
Independents will be pushed to Trump, as they now realize our country has become a combination of the Soviet gulag and 1930s Nazi Germany. Trump becomes a symbol of injustice in America.
If you agree Trump got sympathy for each indictment, and each time his approval went up in the polls, wait until you see what happens after an unjust guilty verdict.
After a guilty verdict, black and minority voters will come to Trump like never before. They see in Trump’s guilty verdict, themselves. The same injustice, the same persecution they’ve felt at the hands of an unjust, biased and rigged justice system. The same system that was out to get them, just got Trump.
Trump will receive the highest black and minority vote totals in history, no matter what happens at this trial. But if he’s found guilty, Trump may very well do the impossible…
Trump may win a MAJORITY of black and Latino votes.
And a guilty verdict does something even more important for America: it exposes the evil in our system and the evil-doers. After Trump wins the election, it gives Trump the “cover” and justification he needs to clean up our corrupt government; to go after the people who committed these crimes; who weaponized our government; to put them in prison. To make sure this never happens again.
What’s the third win for Trump? Well, that’s the biggest win of all.
God put President Trump in right place, at right time, for past two months. Trump was trapped in New York day after day. He had no choice, but to stay in the New York area. Which led him to embrace a strategy I’ve urged him to pursue for many years.
I’ve written commentary after commentary since Trump’s first presidential run urging him to hold rallies in deep blue cities, and to campaign in black and minority neighborhoods.
Because of this New York trial, Trump was out campaigning in blue neighborhoods. He was visiting a bodega in Harlem. He held rallies in deep blue New Jersey and 100% minority South Bronx. And the people showed up in record numbers…and they loved him!
Because Trump was trapped in NY, he was forced to do what I believed all along would make him the most beloved politician in history.
And now that Trump sees it works, I believe this will inspire him to visit black or minority neighborhoods across the USA, and hold rallies in deep blue cities. Ask for their votes. Ask them, “What have you got to lose? Democrats have done nothing for you.”
If they loved Trump in the South Bronx, why not hold rallies in Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Atlanta, Cleveland, Milwaukee and Philly?
God placed Trump in the right place, at the right time. God has chosen Trump to save America, to expose the corruption, to stop weaponization, to stop the rigged elections, to stop the censorship, to stop the open border, to make America great again.
Trump is “the chosen one.”
And this New York Trump Trial is the biggest win-win-win in history, no matter the verdict.
President Trump delivers remarks after Judge Juan Merchan delivered some of the most ridiculous instructions in the history of jury instructions.
Judge Juan Merchan told jurors they do not have to agree unanimously on each of the 3 counts charged. The jury can have 4 members agree to guilt on each of the three counts and the judge will accept that as 12 decisions for guilt overall. There’s no way these types of instructions will pass appellate court review; but that’s not the purpose of the Lawfare that Judge Merchan is participating in. WATCH:
Judge Merchan has instructed the jury they do not need to have a *UNANIMOUS* verdict in order to convict former President Donald J. Trump.
"One thing in particular that the judge said the jurors could do. He delivered what is being called really the pinnacle of all… pic.twitter.com/Zul2sdFLOk
Florida Senator Rick Scott was seated in the front row of the courtroom gallery today as he showed support for President Trump in New York City.
Many of President Trump’s supporters in politics understand he is under a gag order and unable to speak in his own defense. It is good to see those who understand the dynamic show up in New York to say the things President Trump cannot.
In his media remarks the former Florida Governor and current Senator Rick Scott, outlined the background of the key participants who are targeting Trump via these ridiculous political Lawfare tactics. Strong and truthful remarks by Senator Scott. WATCH:
Judge Arthur Engoron is now under investigation after claims surfaced that he received unsolicited advice from a prominent New York City real estate attorney, Adam Leitman Bailey, weeks before ordering former President Donald Trump to pay a hefty $454 million judgment.
This investigation by the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct seeks to determine whether Engoron violated judicial conduct rules, NBC New York reported.
In March, Engoron ordered Trump to pay more than a $355 million fine and barred Trump “from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York for a period of three years.” Trump was also required to pay interest on the penalties, bringing the total amount to $454 million.
Engoron claimed Trump and each of the defendants “participated in aiding and abetting the conspiracy to commit insurance fraud by their individual acts in falsifying business records and valuations, causing materially fraudulent SFCs to be intentionally submitted to insurance companies.”
Eric Trump and Don Jr. were also ordered to pay $4,013,024 each.
Letitia James sought $370 million in ‘damages’ when there was no victim in this fraud case, and she also sought to ban Trump and his sons from operating any businesses in New York. She accused Trump of inflating his assets and defrauding lenders and insurance companies, despite having no evidence or rationality.
Bailey stated publicly that he spoke with Judge Engoron three weeks before the decision, advising him to “get it right.” Although Engoron has denied any influence from Bailey, the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct is reportedly investigating whether Engoron violated judicial conduct rules, according to NBC New York.
“I actually had the ability to speak to him three weeks ago,” Bailey told NBC New York on Feb. 16. “I saw him in the corner [at the courthouse] and I told my client, ‘I need to go.’ And I walked over and we started talking … I wanted him to know what I think and why…I really want him to get it right.”
Bailey maintains he has no personal connection to any lawsuits involving Trump and is not a fan of the former president. He claims to have advised Engoron that a ruling imposing such a substantial fine could damage New York’s economy. Bailey also mentioned that Engoron “had a lot of questions, you know, about certain cases” during their conversation.
In response, Judge Engoron’s spokesperson Al Baker vehemently denied any impropriety, stating that “No ex parte conversation concerning this matter occurred between Justice Engoron and Mr. Bailey or any other person. The decision Justice Engoron issued on February 16 was his alone, deeply considered, and wholly uninfluenced by this individual.”
The Latin term ex parte means “from one party”. In legal terms, it refers to a legal proceeding that is conducted without the presence or notice of the other party. It can also refer to improper contact between a judge or party and a lawyer.
New York State Rules of Judicial Conduct explicitly prohibit judges from engaging in ex parte communications, except when seeking advice from a disinterested expert.
According to New York law, “If a judge inadvertently receives an unauthorized ex parte communication bearing upon the substance of a matter, the judge shall make provision promptly to notify the parties of the substance of the communication and provide the parties with an opportunity to respond.”
The New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct will now consider whether the rules of judicial conduct were violated in this instance, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The commission’s administrator, Robert Tembeckjian, declined to comment, citing a statute on confidentiality.
Christopher Kise, a member of the Trump defense team which has repeatedly criticized Engoron’s handling of the case, said if Bailey’s claims are true, it casts doubt on the integrity of the process.
“The code doesn’t provide an exception for ‘well, this was a small conversation’ or ‘well, it didn’t really impact me’ or ‘well, this wasn’t something that I, the judge, found significant,” Kise said. “No. The code is very clear.”
Several experts consulted by NBC New York said the rules are meant not only to prevent outside influence, but also any appearance of outside influence.
A true courtroom stunner came just days ago when Jack Smith, prosecuting President Trump for having government documents from his presidency in his home, admitted his team lied to the public and the court in the case.
Regarding the evidence.
Trump turned blunt, calling for Smith to be arrested over his admission, in a court filing, that he lied to the court about the documents seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
“ARREST DERANGED JACK SMITH. HE IS A CRIMINAL!” Trump said in a Truth Social post this weekend.
The issue is that in a court filing, prosecutors admitted thee lied to the court, confessing that the FBI messed with the boxes containing those materials, and now not even Smith can be sure of the order or placement of the documents, which could be a critical factor in the case.
Now a Declassified report from famed investigative journalist Julie Kelly notes that the situation is “potentially case-killing.”
FBI photo of documents seized in the raid of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
She explained, “New court filings in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s espionage and obstruction case against Trump and two co-defendants conclusively demonstrate that the government used the cover sheets to deceive the public as well as the court. The photo was a stunt, and one that adds more fuel to this dumpster-fire case.”
She noted Jay Bratt, who is assigned to Smith’s team, earlier claimed: “[Thirteen] boxes or containers contained documents with classification markings, and in all, over one hundred unique documents with classification markings…were seized. Certain of the documents had colored cover sheets indicating their classification status.”
The FBI staged a photograph of documents, and released it to the public to create public interest in the case.
But Kelly continued, “The DOJ’s clever wordsmithing, however, did not accurately describe the origin of the cover sheets. In what must be considered not only an act of doctoring evidence but willfully misleading the American people into believing the former president is a criminal and threat to national security, agents involved in the raid attached the cover sheets to at least seven files to stage the photo.”
She explained, “Classified cover sheets were not ‘recovered’ in the container, contrary to Bratt’s declaration to the court. In fact, after being busted recently by defense attorneys for mishandling evidence in the case, Bratt had to fess up about how the cover sheets actually ended up on the documents.”
She said his latest explanation is: “[If] the investigative team found a document with classification markings, it removed the document, segregated it, and replaced it with a placeholder sheet. The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose.”
Kelly noted that the FBI’s use of those “cover sheets” just before they were used as placeholders.
“Agents apparently used them as props. FBI agents took it upon themselves to paperclip the sheets to documents—something evident given the uniform nature of how each cover sheet is clipped to each file in the photo—laid them on the floor, and snapped a picture for political posterity,” she noted.
The immediate result was that Judge Aileen M. Cannon has further delayed the next steps in the case, meaning it might not even come to trial until after the November election, which polls show Trump is likely to win.
Kelly called the FBI’s staged photograph the “the picture that launched a thousand pearl-clutching articles.”
She suggested that the behavior of the investigators raises “many troubling questions … about the FBI’s handling of the alleged incriminating documents.”
“For example, who made the on-site determination as to the classification level appropriate for each document? Did agents have security clearance and expertise related to classification? Did the agents know whether the document had been declassified by Trump while still in office?”
And she noted that defense lawyers have pointed out Smith’s office handed out inaccurate information about the evidence.
And Bratt conceded that was correct, confessing the FBI has not been able to determine which document “with classification markings” goes with which placeholder.
“This is a potentially case-blowing mistake, particularly if the document in question is one of the 34 records that represents the basis of espionage charges against Trump,” Kelly charged.
Bratt also had confirmed to the judge that the boxes of documents are “in their original, intact form as seized,” citing only that classified docs were replaced with placeholders.
Guest post by Joe Hoft at JoeHoft.com – republished with permission
Andrew Weissmann led the Mueller sham investigation against President Trump. Now he’s a top Deep State player behind DA Bragg’s bogus Manhattan case against President Trump.
Andrew Weissmann is the face of DOJ corruption. He has been overturned by the Supreme Court and he’s been behind most all the efforts to attack President Trump through lawfare.
DA Bragg’s case against President Trump is a mess. There is no crime and yet the DA charged President Trump for 34 felonies that were all made up. The crimes aren’t even clear. It’s a total disaster which is why it is likely a plot by leftist mastermind Andrew Weissmann.
In a tweet this pst weekend, Weissmann shares that he believes that a defendant in the US must prove their innocence. This is third world communist stuff.
He was quickly outed as a moron for his ignorance of the law.
Shipwreckedcrew tweeted: You are a moron. Trump doesn’t have to prove anything tor the jury to acquit. You repeatedly mis-state fundamental premises of the criminal justice system.
You are a moron.
Trump doesn't need to prove anything for the jury to acquit.
You repeatedly mis-state fundamental premises of the criminal justice system. https://t.co/zsJkUuu2fS
Attorney Jeff Clark points out that “enough to acquit” is not a legal principal in the US.
Can we make sure “enough to acquit” is a phrase forever associated with Andrew Weissmann? It’s right from the lips of a government statist whose baseline is not liberty and thus the presumption of innocence but instead subjection to raw government power and a presumption that prosecutors are always right. He’s a walking-talking evil inversion.
Can we make sure “enough to acquit” is a phrase forever associated with Andrew Weissmann?
It’s right from the lips of a government statist whose baseline is not liberty and thus the presumption of innocence but instead subjection to raw government power and a presumption that… https://t.co/nMcQmz2EVW
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan Launches Investigation into Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Admission of FBI Evidence Tampering in Trump Mar-a-Lago Case
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has launched an investigation into Special Counsel Jack Smith following recent admission that some of the evidence in President Trump’s ‘classified’ documents case was altered or manipulated after being seized by the FBI during its raid on Mar-a-Lago.
The Gateway Pundit reported that Jack Smith’s admission came in response to Trump’s co-defendant, Walt Nauta’s, legal team’s concerns about discrepancies in the evidence’s organization.
Walt Nauta, a former White House valet and Navy veteran who later served as a personal staffer at Mar-a-Lago and was indicted alongside Trump last year, claimed through his attorney that the order of items in the seized boxes did not match their scans provided during discovery.
In a late Friday filing, Smith conceded that the FBI had indeed moved documents around within the boxes that contained ‘classified’ information. This directly contradicts earlier Department of Justice (DOJ) assurances to the court that the contents’ arrangement had been preserved intact.
According to a footnote in the motion reviewed by The Gateway Pundit, the FBI messed with the boxes containing the ‘classified’ documents they seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Footnote 3: The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court. See, e.g., 4/12/24 Hearing Tr. at 65 (Government responding to the Court’s question of whether the boxes were “in their original, intact form as seized” by stating “[t]hey are, with one exception; and that is that the classified documents have been removed and placeholders have been put in the documents.”
In August 2022, the DOJ lied to the Court by asserting that the red, blue, and yellow sheets displayed in the widely circulated photo of the ‘classified’ documents indicated their classification status. It turns out they were “slip sheets” the FBI used to replace the so-called classified documents.
The DOJ lied, claiming, “Evidence, thirteen boxes or containers contained documents with classification markings, and in all, over one hundred unique documents with classification markings-that is, more than twice the amount produced on June 3, 2022, in response to the grand jury subpoena were seized. Certain of the documents had colored cover sheets indicating their classification status. See, e.g., Attachment F (redacted FBI photograph of certain documents and classified cover sheets recovered from a container in the “45 office”). The classification levels ranged from CONFIDENTIAL to TOP SECRET information, and certain documents included additional sensitive compartments that signify very limited distribution.”
The FBI admitted they messed with Trump’s documents! The FBI used cover sheets as placeholders for the classified documents.
“After the boxes were brought to WFO, the FBI created an index to correlate the documents with classification markings to codes (e.g., document “bb”) and labeled the classified cover sheets in the boxes with the codes for the seized documents. The FBI also generally replaced the handwritten sheets with classified cover sheets annotated with the index code, but regardless, any handwritten sheets that currently remain in the boxes do not represent additional classified documents—they were just not removed when the classified cover sheets with the index code were added. In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet.”
Jack Smith also claimed the FBI found so many classified documents that they ran out of ‘slip sheets.’
“The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose, until the FBI ran out because there were so many classified documents, at which point the team began using blank sheets with handwritten notes indicating the classification level of the document(s) seized,” Jack Smith laughably claimed.
In response to these revelations, President Trump took to Truth Social, calling for the arrest of Jack Smith, labeling the prosecution a “sham.”
“ARREST DERANGED JACK SMITH. HE IS A CRIMINAL!” Trump said in a Truth Social post this weekend.
Chairman Jim Jordan expressed grave concern about the justice system’s impartiality and adherence to professional standards within the DOJ.
In a letter addressed to Jeffrey Ragsdale, Counsel of the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), Jordan stated, “This acknowledgment presents grave concerns about the Department’s commitment to impartial justice, whether the Special Counsel’s Office misled a federal court, and whether the Special Counsel’s Office strenuously upheld the highest professional standards of the Department of Justice.”
Jordan demanded that the OPR investigate Jack Smith, Jay Bratt (a senior member of Smith’s office), and other attorneys involved, citing serious ethical lapses in the prosecution.
The House Judiciary Committee has demanded to produce the following documents and information:
All documents and communications referring or relating to any allegation of ethical impropriety or any OPR investigation concerning the conduct of Jack Smith, Jay Bratt, or any other attorney assigned to work with the Office of Special Counsel Jack Smith;
All documents and communications referring or relating to the manipulation of documents seized from President Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago; and
All documents and communications referring or relating to Jay Bratt interactions with Walt Nauta’s defense counsel, including allegations that Bratt attempted to coerce Mr. Nauta’s cooperation with the government by leveraging the prosect of a judgeship for his counsel.
The deadline set for the DOJ to respond to the Committee’s demands for information and a briefing is 5:00 p.m. on May 20, 2024.
#NEWS: @Jim_Jordan investigates Jack Smith’s acknowledgment that some of the evidence in President Trump’s classified documents case was altered or manipulated after it was seized by the FBI in its raid on Mar-a-Lago. pic.twitter.com/9Qn6h9D3h5
Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday afternoon indefinitely postponed Jack Smith’s classified documents trial against Trump.
As previously reported, Judge Cannon on Monday night postponed a key deadline in the classified documents case after Special Counsel Jack Smith admitted to tampering with evidence.
Cannon on Monday evening temporarily stayed a May 9 deadline for President Trump and his co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira related to CIPA.
On Tuesday afternoon, Judge Cannon set a second set of pre-trial deadlines to manage pending discovery and disclosure matters.
The Judge vacated the May 20, 2024 trial date. It may be several months until Judge Cannon sets a new trial date.
“The Court also determines that finalization of a trial date at this juncture—before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and CIPA issues remaining and forthcoming—would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court, critical CIPA issues, and additional pretrial and trial preparations necessary to present this case to a jury. The Court therefore vacates the current May 20, 2024, trial date (and associated calendar call), to be reset by separate order following resolution of the matters before the Court, consistent with Defendants’ right to due process and the public’s interest in the fair and efficient administration of justice,” Cannon wrote in an order reviewed by The Gateway Pundit.
In a motion filed late Friday, Jack Smith admitted the FBI messed with the boxes containing “classified” documents they seized from Trump and can’t be sure the order or the placement of the documents.
Jack Smith in his Friday night response admitted the FBI moved the classified documents around.
According to a footnote in the motion reviewed by The Gateway Pundit, the FBI messed with the boxes containing the ‘classified’ documents they seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
The DOJ previously assured the Court that the placement of classified documents as originally found had been maintained – THEY LIED!
Footnote 3: The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court. See, e.g., 4/12/24 Hearing Tr. at 65 (Government responding to the Court’s question of whether the boxes were “in their original, intact form as seized” by stating “[t]hey are, with one exception; and that is that the classified documents have been removed and placeholders have been put in the documents”
The DOJ in August 2022 lied to the Court when they claimed the red, blue and yellow sheets shown in the viral photo of the classified documents indicated their classification status.
The FBI admitted they messed with Trump’s documents! The FBI used cover sheets as placeholders for the classified documents.
“After the boxes were brought to WFO, the FBI created an index to correlate the documents with classification markings to codes (e.g., document “bb”) and labeled the classified cover sheets in the boxes with the codes for the seized documents. The FBI also generally replaced the handwritten sheets with classified cover sheets annotated with the index code, but regardless, any handwritten sheets that currently remain in the boxes do not represent additional classified documents—they were just not removed when the classified cover sheets with the index code were added. In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet.”
Judge Aileen Cannon has issued an order [SEE HERE] canceling the original trial date and suspending the trial proceedings pending resolution of multiple pre-trial issues. Lawfare is big mad.
(Via Politico) – […] The date had been widely expected to move amid a tangle of pretrial conflicts between special counsel Jack Smith and Trump’s attorneys. Smith had urged Judge Aileen Cannon to reschedule the trial to begin on July 8, but an order from the judge on Tuesday afternoon suggested that she is unlikely to even decide on a new trial date before late July.
[…] “[F]inalization of a trial date at this juncture — before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and [classified evidence] issues … would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions,” Cannon wrote in the five-page order.
That reshuffling further clouds the picture for Smith, who is also awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity that could determine whether his other case against Trump — charges in Washington D.C. for attempting to subvert the 2020 election — can move forward this year. (read more)
Elise Stefanik Takes Action Against Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Election Interference – ‘Fight The Democrats Unjust Lawfare And Expose This Corruption’
On Tuesday, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) filed an official ethics complaint with the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility against special counsel Jack Smith, claiming that Smith is interfering in the 2024 presidential election with the indictments he brought against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump last year.
In her complaint to Office of Professional Responsibility counsel Jeffrey Ragsdale, Rep. Stefanik, who is rumored to be a potential vice presidential pick for Trump, pointed out a serious violation. She stated that Smith’s attempt to expedite his case to trial before the election is a clear breach of the Department of Justice’s long-standing policy. This policy strictly prohibits timing investigations to aid a certain political candidate. “Biden special counsel Jack Smith is attempting to expedite the trial in order to influence the general election in November,” she wrote.
Rep. Stefanik further detailed the alleged misconduct of Smith and his team. She asserted that they have repeatedly violated the court-ordered stay by serving 4,000 pages of discovery to Trump’s legal team and making a pretrial motion in district court. This, she argued, is a clear indication of Smith’s conduct bringing disrepute to the Department of Justice and the entire federal government. “The DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility should impose the discipline that such conduct warrants,” the lawmaker added.
The New York representative demanded that Ragsdale open an investigation into Smith immediately for his actions that attempted to “politicize his criminal prosecution” and interfere in the general election against Trump. During a press conference after Stefanik issued the complaint, she reconfirmed her resolve to fight back against the various prosecutors going after the former president.
“Democrats’ corrupt and desperate witch hunts against President Trump must come to an end. This is lawfare and blatant election interference, and the American people know it. That is why today I filed an official complaint with the Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility on Joe Biden’s special counsel, Jack Smith, for his clear and illegal efforts of election interference,” she said. “We will fight the Democrats unjust lawfare and expose this corruption whether it is in New York, Atlanta, or right here in Washington, DC.”
President Trump is currently facing four criminal indictments against him. The first, which is currently underway in New York City, was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) in which the DA’s office charged Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records by writing down in business ledgers that hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels were legal payments to Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen. The other case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) alleges that Trump and 18 other co-defendants attempted to illegally overturn the 2020 election. Special counsel Jack Smith brought the last two indictments, with one being focused on the 2020 election and the other focused on classified documents Trump allegedly took with him post-presidency to Mar-a-Lago.
🚨🚨🚨 I just filed an official ethics complaint against Jack Smith with the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility for his illegal election interference.
It’s obvious to any reasonable observer that Jack Smith is trying to interfere with the 2024 election… pic.twitter.com/lNW4MUz5Oi
Democrats’ corrupt and desperate witch hunts against President Trump must come to an end. This is lawfare and blatant election interference and the American people know it. That is why today I filed an official complaint with the Department of Justice Office of Professional… pic.twitter.com/yo61lAbnnD
Fani Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, is currently dealing with yet another legal issue—this time, a lawsuit brought by a state legislator in Georgia.
In her suit, Rep. Mesha Mainor, a Republican elected to the Georgia House in 2020, “alleges that Willis, Commissioner Marvin Arrington, the Fulton County Ethics Board, and the county itself were derelict in its duties to properly litigate a criminal case in which Mainor was repeatedly stalked by a former friend and political associate,” Newsweek reported.
A spokesperson for the state lawmaker said she would provide additional details regarding the lawsuit during a press conference scheduled for Tuesday.
Mainor, who secured a substantial victory in the 2020 election from the constituents of House District 56 in the Democratic stronghold of Atlanta, grabbed headlines last July by switching parties and formally affiliating herself with the Republican Party. At the time, she said she was no longer morally comfortable complying with Democrats’ “left-wing radicalism, lawlessness, and putting the interests of illegal aliens over the interests of Americans.”
Mainor’s lawsuit, which was filed on April 2 in Fulton County Superior Court, alleges that she enlisted Corwin Monson as a campaign volunteer in January 2019. The lawsuit describes them as associates for several years with numerous mutual friends.
He “assured” Mainor he could help her get elected, though one month later, she was “forced to terminate” him after she witnessed “his unruly, belligerent behavior,” the suit said, according to Newsweek.
It reportedly resulted in multiple instances of stalking in various forms, including Monson showing up uninvited to campaign or church events, lingering outside her residence, making calls from different numbers and leaving voicemails, and even proposing to her in front of her minor children at her home, the suit says.
It also claimed that Monson was “in love” with Mainor, though the two of them had never had a romantic relationship.
A judge granted Mainor’s request for a Temporary Protective Order (TPO) against Monson in August 2019. He was subsequently arrested in both September 2019 and September 2020 for violating the TPO.
Following the second incident, Fulton County indicted Monson for aggravated stalking. The second aggravated assault charge in January 2021 could lead to up to 20 years of imprisonment for Monson.
However, the lawsuit alleges that Arrington, who defended Monson in a legal capacity, “used his influence to circumvent the office policies of the District Attorney’s office,” which allegedly included copying the DA on emails, negotiating plea bargains directly, and demanding meetings.
Newsweek added:
Arrington is also alleged to have told Willis “that b**** is crazy”, in reference to Mainor—claimed within the suit to have peddled his influence to in turn influence Willis.
After Willis was sworn in January 2021, she became responsible for the Monson case.
She reportedly dismissed one of his aggravated stalking cases. On the other charge, she offered a plea of three years with one year served in prison and the rest probation. Mainor said she was never informed of the plea deal, [which she] claimed to be a violation of the Georgia Crime Victims Bill of Rights.
“Furthermore, due to DA Willis’ bias towards Mr. Arrington, Plaintiff Mainor has experienced disparate treatment under the law as a victim,” the suit says. “Plaintiff Mainor has been forced to advocate for herself and her safety, although that is the District Attorney’s role.”
Trouble for Willis has been mounting over the past few months which has affected her election-related RICO case against former President Donald Trump. Last month, Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the case, ordered her to either fire an attorney she hired, Nathan Wade, after discovering the two were involved in a romantic relationship or take herself and her entire office off of the case.
A federal judge on Monday adjourned a civil lawsuit brought against former President Donald Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021, riot under a 19th-century law, handing him a delay in the case that he and his legal team sought.
The suit’s lead plaintiff, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), was joined by several other Democrats “who said they were impeded in their duties by the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol,” Newsweek reported.
The case was pursued under an 1871 act designed to prevent the Ku Klux Klan from intimidating members of Congress in the execution of their duties. On Monday, Mehta ruled that “immunity-related discovery” will persist until September 11, 2024.
Following the conclusion of discovery in September, both parties will present their arguments regarding whether Trump is entitled to presidential immunity from the civil lawsuit—a separate matter from the Supreme Court’s examination of presidential immunity from criminal lawsuits. The proceedings for the former could extend over several months.
Newsweek noted that should Trump be given immunity, then the case is over. If presidential immunity is not granted, further discovery on the case’s facts is anticipated, and a trial is unlikely to commence until after the inauguration in January 2025. Trump, who has consistently sought trial delays, could subsequently seek recourse in federal court to postpone the case until after his term in office has concluded.
Newsweek noted further:
On December 4, 2023, Lee had released a statement in which she said “justice is owed to the Congressional staff, Capitol support staff, law enforcement, and members of Congress who feared for their lives on January 6, 2021. I look forward to seeing Mr. Trump in court.”
MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday that a higher court, the Washington D.C. Circuit, had handed the case back to Mehta after reaffirming that “former presidents are entitled to civil immunity for acts even on the ‘outer perimeter’ of their official duties.
“But they [the D.C. Circuit] held Trump had not yet shown his entitlement to such immunity and would instead have a chance to prove in the lower court that ‘his alleged actions in the run-up to and on January 6 were taken in his official capacity as President,’” she wrote.
“That opinion was handed down on December 1, 2023. And now, in the last days of April, Judge Amit Mehta, the district court judge to whom the case has been assigned, has allowed the parties to conduct ‘immunity-related discovery’ through September 11, 2024,” Rubin added, further claiming that Mehta’s ruling doesn’t bode well for Trump in his D.C. criminal case where he’s been charged by special counsel Jack Smith of election interference following Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.
The election fraud proceedings, overseen by Tanya Chutkan, another D.C. district judge, have been put on hold as the Supreme Court deliberates presidential immunity.
“Now think about the criminal case before Judge Chutkan: In a world where the Supreme Court similarly decides there must be further lower court proceedings to determine whether Trump can mount an immunity defense, can that case be tried before 2025? Increasingly, I think not—and that might be the only win Trump wants or needs,” Rubin wrote.
During oral arguments regarding the question last week, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch said that former presidents ought to enjoy some immunity from subsequent attacks if they leave office.
“It didn’t matter what the president’s motives were; that’s something courts shouldn’t get engaged in … I am concerned about future uses of criminal law to target political opponents based on accusations about their motives,” the Supreme Court justice, who was Trump’s first of three appointees to the nation’s highest court, said on April 25.
This is a good overall encapsulation by Julie Kelly and to a lesser extent Steve Bannon about what Judge Aileen Cannon is doing with the Jack Smith “documents” case in Florida.
Kelly notes accurately {See Background} that Judge Aileen Cannon is somewhat limited on what she can do about the federal government case due to the DOJ using the false pretense of “national security” to control how the judicial branch can interact with the lawfare construct of the executive branch. The Lawfare crew intentionally created the “national security” angle to control all sides of the case and limit the release of information to the public.
Judge Cannon has recently been releasing and un-redacting documents and motions filed in the case to allow disinfecting sunlight and transparency to enter. This approach undercuts the prosecution manipulation, the DOJ does not like it. Julie Kelly outlines some of the details that Cannon’s releases have highlighted. {Direct Rumble Link}
At the 12:00 minute mark, Steve Bannon highlights his anger as he rails against congress and the staff of multiple committees who participate in the willful blindness and pretending game.
After noticing how congress is mute about the revelations that Cannon is providing, Bannon notes the republicans are essentially anti-Trump and controlled opposition, which is essentially accurate…. However, he’s just now noticing this?
It is a little annoying to see Mr. Bannon discuss outrage as a manipulative tactic {Chaffe and Countermeasures}, considering the years of outrage traps laid by the republicans in the Deep State against President Trump. The latest effort by congress pretending not to notice, and then staying quiet, is not exactly a surprise.
Think about two sets of documents as evidence against two teams working in synergy. Team one (Clinton) was outside government. Team two (DOJ/FBI) was inside government. The documents the DOJ/FBI were urgently searching to retrieve pertained to both groups but were also divided. That helps to explain the wording of the memo below and the motive behind the DOJ/FBI using the General Services Administration (GSA) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as tools to conduct post-Trump-term physical surveillance and searches.
Here’s the Occam’s Razor…. and I will only say this once. A lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and the Spygate manipulators was filed in 2022. [LINK HERE]
The lawsuit was filed against specific persons, and most of those persons were interviewed by the FBI as part of the originating investigation. Within the subjects of the lawsuit, we find names and groups including:
Hillary Clinton, Hillary for America Campaign Committee, DNC, DNC Services Corp, Perkins Coie, Michael Sussmann, Marc Elias, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Charles Dolan, Jake Sullivan, John Podesta, Robby Mook, Phillipe Reines as well as Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, Peter Fritsch, Nellie Ohr, Bruce Ohr, Orbis Business Intelligence, Christopher Steele, Igor Danchenko, Neustar Inc., Rodney Joffe, James Comey Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith and Andrew McCabe.
Once the lawsuit against CLINTON/FBI was filed, the background physical paper evidence no longer needed to be in the possession of the person(s) who wrote the lawsuit (physical possession). [LINK HERE] Simple thumb-drives would suffice.
Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; instead, what they did was take the preexisting system and retool it so the weapons only targeted one side of the political continuum. This point is where many people understandably get confused.
In the era shortly after 9/11, the DC national security apparatus was constructed to preserve continuity of government and simultaneously view all Americans as potential threats. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were created specifically for this purpose.
What Barack Obama and Eric Holder did with that new construct was refine the internal targeting mechanisms so that only their ideological opposition became the target of the new national security system. This is very important to understand as you dig deeper into this research outline.
Washington DC created the modern national security apparatus immediately and hurriedly after 9/11/01. DHS came along in 2002, and within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 the ODNI was formed. When Barack Obama and Eric Holder arrived a few years later, those newly formed institutions were viewed as opportunities to create a very specific national security apparatus that would focus almost exclusively against their political opposition.
The preexisting Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Dept of Justice (DOJ) were then repurposed to become two of the four pillars of the domestic national security apparatus. However, this new construct would have a targeting mechanism based on political ideology. The DHS, ODNI, DOJ and FBI became the four pillars of this new institution. Atop these pillars is where you will find the Fourth Branch of Government.
We were not sleeping when this happened, we were wide awake. However, we were stunningly distracted by the economic collapse that was taking place in 2006 and 2007 when the engineers behind Obama started to assemble the design. By the time Obama took office in 2009, we sensed something profound was shifting, but we can only see exactly what shifted in the aftermath. The four pillars were put into place, and a new Fourth Branch of Government was quietly created.
As time passed, and the system operators became familiar with their new tools, technology allowed the tentacles of the system to reach out and touch us. That is when we first started to notice that something very disconcerting was happening. Those four pillars are the root of it, and if we take the time to understand how the Fourth Branch originated, questions about this current state of perpetual angst will start to make sense.
Grab a cup of your favorite beverage, and take a walk with me as we outline how this was put together. You might find many of the questions about our current state of political affairs beginning to make a lot more sense.
Remember, it is not my intent to outline the entire history of how we got to this place where the intelligence community now acts as the superseding fourth branch of government. Such an effort would be exhausting and likely take our discussion away from understanding the current dynamic.
History provided enough warnings from Dwight D. Eisenhower (military), to John F. Kennedy (CIA), to Richard Nixon (FBI), to all modern versions of warnings and frustrations from HPSCI Devin Nunes and ODNI Ric Grenell. None of those prior reference points are invalid, and all documented outlines of historic reference are likely true and accurate. However, a generational review is not useful, as the reference impacting us ‘right now‘ gets lost.
Instead, we pick up the expansive and weaponized intelligence system as it manifests after 9/11/01, and my goal is to highlight how the modern version of the total intelligence apparatus has now metastasized into a Fourth Branch of Government. It is this superseding branch that now touches and influences every facet of our life.
If we take the modern construct, originating at the speed of technological change, we can also see how the oversight or “check/balance” in our system of government became functionally obsolescent.
After many years of granular research about the intelligence apparatus inside our government, in the summer of 2020 I visited Washington DC to ask specific questions. My goal was to go where the influence agents within government actually operate, and to discover the people deep inside the institutions no one elected and few people pay attention to.
It was during this process when I discovered how information is purposefully put into containment silos; essentially a formal process to block the flow of information between agencies and between the original branches. While frustrating to discover, the silo effect was important because understanding the communication between networks leads to our ability to reconcile conflict between what we perceive and what’s actually taking place.
After days of research and meetings in DC during 2020; amid a town that was serendipitously shut down due to COVID-19; I found a letter slid under the door of my room in a nearly empty hotel with an introduction of sorts. The subsequent discussions were perhaps the most important. After many hours of specific questions and answers on specific examples, I realized why our nation is in this mess. That is when I discovered the fourth and superseding branch of government, the Intelligence Branch.
I am going to explain how the Intelligence Branch works: (1) to control every other branch of government; (2) how it functions as an entirely independent branch of government with no oversight; (3) how and why it was created to be independent from oversight; (4) what is the current mission of the IC Branch, and most importantly (5) who operates it.
The Intelligence Branch is an independent functioning branch of government, it is no longer a subsidiary set of agencies within the Executive Branch as most would think. To understand the Intelligence Branch, we need to drop the elementary school civics class lessons about three coequal branches of government and replace that outlook with the modern system that created itself.
The Intelligence Branch functions much like the State Dept, through a unique set of public-private partnerships that support it. Big Tech industry collaboration with intelligence operatives is part of that functioning; almost like an NGO. However, the process is much more important than most think. In this problematic perspective of a corrupt system of government, the process is the flaw – not the outcome.
There are people making decisions inside this little known, unregulated and out-of-control branch of government that impact every facet of our lives.
None of the people operating deep inside the Intelligence Branch were elected, and our elected representative House members genuinely do not know how the system works. I assert this position affirmatively because I have talked to House and Senate staffers, including the chiefs of staff for multiple House & Senate committee seats. They are not malicious people; however, they are genuinely clueless of things that happen outside their silo. That is part of the purpose of me explaining it, with examples, in full detail with sunlight.
We begin….
In April of 2016, the FBI launched a counterintelligence operation against presidential candidate Donald Trump. The questioning about that operation is what New York Representative Elise Stefanik cites in March of 2017, approximately 11 months later (First Two Minutes).
Things to note:
♦ Notice how FBI Director James Comey just matter-of-factly explains no one outside the DOJ was informed about the FBI operation. Why? Because that’s just the way things are done. His justification for unilateral operations was “because of the sensitivity of the matter“, totally ignoring any constitutional or regulatory framework for oversight; because, well, quite simply, there isn’t any. The intelligence apparatus inside the DOJ/FBI can, and does, operate based on their own independent determinations of authority.
♦ Notice also how FBI Director Comey shares his perspective that informing the National Security Council (NSC) is the equivalent of notifying the White House. The FBI leadership expressly believe they bear no responsibility to brief the Chief Executive. As long as they tell some unknown, unelected, bureaucratic entity inside the NSC, their unwritten responsibility to inform the top of their institutional silo is complete. If the IC wants to carve out the Oval Office, they simply plant information inside the NSC and, from their perspective, their civic responsibility to follow checks-and-balances is complete. This is an intentional construct.
♦ Notice how Comey obfuscates notification to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), by avoiding the fact James Clapper was the DNI from outset of the counterintelligence operation throughout the remainder of Obama’s term. When I get deeper into the process, we will understand how the Intelligence Branch has intentionally used the creation of the DNI position (established post 9/11/01) as a method to avoid oversight, not enhance it. Keeping an oblivious doofus like James Clapper in position held strategic value [Doofus Reminder HERE].
That video of James Comey being questioned by Elise Stefanik was the first example given to me by someone who knew the background of everything that was taking place preceding that March 20, 2017, hearing. That FBI reference point is a key to understand how the Intelligence Branch operates with unilateral authority above Congress (legislative branch), above the White House (executive branch), and even above the court system (judicial branch).
Also, watch this short video of James Clapper because it is likely many readers have forgotten, and likely even more readers have never seen it. Watch closely how then White House national security adviser John Brennan is responding in that video. This is before Brennan became CIA Director, this is when Brennan was helping Barack Obama put the pillars into place. WATCH:
[Sidebar: Every time I post this video it gets scrubbed from YouTube (example), so save it if you ever want to see it again.]
The video of James Clapper highlights how the ODNI position (created with good national security intention) ended up becoming the fulcrum for modern weaponization, and is now an office manipulated by agencies with a vested interest in retaining power. The Intelligence Branch holds power over the ODNI through their influence and partnership with the body that authorizes the power within it, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).
Factually, the modern intelligence apparatus uses checks and balances in their favor. The checks create silos of proprietary information, classified information, vaults of information that work around oversight issues. The silos are part of the problem.
Ironically, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created in the aftermath of 9/11/01 expressly to eliminate the silos of information which they felt led to a domestic terrorist attack that could have been prevented. The ODNI was created specifically upon the recommendation of the 9/11 commission.
The intent was to create a central hub of intelligence information, inside the Executive Branch, where the CIA, NSA, DoD, DoS, and DIA could deposit their unique intelligence products and a repository would be created so that domestic intelligence operations, like the DOJ and FBI could access them when needed to analyze threats to the U.S. This, they hoped, would ensure the obvious flags missed in the 9/11 attacks would not be missed again.
The DNI office created a problem for those who operate in the shadows of proprietary information. You’ll see how it was critical to install a person uniquely skilled in being an idiot, James Clapper, into that willfully blind role while intelligence operatives worked around the office to assemble the Intelligence Branch of Government.
• The last federal budget that flowed through the traditional budgetary process was signed into law in September of 2007 for fiscal year 2008 by George W. Bush. Every budget since then has been a fragmented process of continuing resolutions and individual spending bills.
Why does this matter? Because many people think defunding the Intelligence Community is a solution; it is not…. at least, not yet. Worse yet, the corrupt divisions deep inside the U.S. intelligence system can now fund themselves from multinational private sector partnerships (banks, corporations and foreign entities).
• When Democrats took over the House of Representatives in January 2007, they took office with a plan. Nancy Pelosi became Speaker, and Democrats controlled the Senate where Harry Reid was Majority Leader. Barack Obama was a junior senator from Illinois.
Pelosi and Reid intentionally did not advance a budget in 2008 (for fiscal year 2009) because their plan included installing Barack Obama (and all that came with him) with an open checkbook made even more lucrative by a worsening financial crisis and a process called baseline budgeting. Baseline budgeting means the prior fiscal year budget is accepted as the starting point for the next year budget. All previous expenditures are baked into the cake within baseline budgeting.
Massive bailouts preceded Obama’s installation due to U.S. economic collapse, and massive bailouts continued after his installation. This is the ‘never let a crisis go to waste’ aspect. TARP (Troubled Asset Recovery Program), auto bailouts (GM), and the massive stimulus spending bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, ie. those shovel ready jobs) were all part of the non budget spending. The federal reserve assisted with Quantitative Easing (QE1 and QE2) as congress passed various Porkulous spending bills further spending and replacing the formal budget process.
Note: There has never been a budget passed in the normal/traditional process since September of 2007.
• While Obama’s radical ‘transformation‘ was triggered across a broad range of government institutions, simultaneously spending on the U.S. military was cut, but spending on the intelligence apparatus expanded. We were all distracted by Obamacare, and the Republican party wanted to keep us that way. However, in the background there was a process of transformation taking place that included very specific action by Eric Holder and targeted effort toward the newest executive agency the ODNI.
The people behind Obama, those same people now behind Joe Biden, knew from years of strategic planning that ‘radical transformation’ would require control over specific elements inside the U.S. government. Eric Holder played a key role in his position as U.S. Attorney General in the DOJ.
AG Holder recruited ideologically aligned political operatives who were aware of the larger institutional objectives. One of those objectives was weaponizing the DOJ-National Security Division (DOJ-NSD) a division inside the DOJ that had no inspector general oversight. For most people the DOJ-NSD weaponization surfaced with a hindsight awakening of the DOJ-NSD targeting candidate Donald Trump many years later. However, by then the Holder crew had executed almost eight full years of background work.
• The second larger Obama/Holder objective was control over the FBI. Why was that important? Because the FBI does the domestic investigative work on anyone who needs or holds a security clearance. The removal of security clearances could be used as a filter to further build the internal ideological army they were assembling. Additionally, with new power in the ODNI created as a downstream consequence of the Patriot Act, new protocols for U.S. security clearances were easy to justify.
Carefully selecting fellow ideological travelers was facilitated by this filtration within the security clearance process. How does that issue later manifest? Just look around at how politicized every intelligence agency has become, specifically including the FBI.
• At the exact same time this new background security clearance process was ongoing, again everyone distracted by the fight over Obamacare, inside the Department of State (Secretary Hillary Clinton) a political alignment making room for the next phase was being assembled. Names like Samantha Power, Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton were familiar on television while Lisa Monaco worked as a legal liaison between the Obama White House and Clinton State Department.
Through the Dept of State (DoS) the intelligence apparatus began working on their first steps to align Big Tech with a larger domestic institutional objective. Those of you who remember the “Arab Spring”, some say “Islamist Spring”, will remember it was triggered by Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo – his first foreign trip. The State Department worked with grassroots organizers (mostly Muslim Brotherhood) in Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Qatar and Libya. Obama leaned heavily on the organizational network of Turkish President Recep Erdogan for contacts and support.
Why does this aspect matter to us? Well, you might remember how much effort the Obama administration put into recruiting Facebook and Twitter as resources for the various mideast rebellions the White House and DoS supported. This was the point of modern merge between the U.S. intelligence community and Big Tech social media.
In many ways, the coordinated political outcomes in Libya and Egypt were the beta test for the coordinated domestic political outcomes we saw in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The U.S. intelligence community working with social media platforms and political operatives.
Overlaying all of that background activity was also a new alignment of the Obama-era intelligence apparatus with ideological federal “contractors“. Where does this contractor activity manifest? In the FISA Court opinion of Rosemary Collyer who cited the “interagency memorandum of understanding”, or MOU.
Hopefully, you can see a small part of how tentacled the system to organize/weaponize the intelligence apparatus was. None of this was accidental, all of this was by design, and the United States Senate was responsible for intentionally allowing most of this to take place.
That’s the 30,000/ft level backdrop history of what was happening as the modern IC was created. Next we will go into how all these various intelligence networks began working in unison and how they currently control all of the other DC institutions under them; including how they can carve out the President from knowing their activity.
♦ When Barack Obama was installed in January 2009, the Democrats held a 60 seat majority in the U.S. Senate. As the people behind the Obama installation began executing their longer-term plan, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was a tool to create the Intelligence Branch; it was not an unintentional series of events.
When Obama was installed, Dianne Feinstein was the Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), and Democrat operative Dan Jones was her lead staffer. Feinstein was completely controlled by those around her including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The CIA was in the process of turning over personnel following the Bush era, and as a result of a massive multi-year narrative of diminished credibility (Iraq WMD), a deep purge was underway. Obama/Holder were in the process of shifting intelligence alignment and the intensely political Democrat Leader Harry Reid was a key participant.
THE TRAP – Many people say that Congress is the solution to eliminating the Fourth and superseding Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. This is an exercise in futility because the Legislative Branch, specifically the SSCI, facilitated the creation of the Intelligence Branch. The SSCI cannot put the genie they created back in the bottle without admitting they too are corrupt; and the background story of their corruption is way too intense to be exposed now.
Every member of the SSCI is compromised in some controlling manner. Those Senators who disliked the control over them; specifically disliked because the risk of sunlight was tenuous and, well, possible; have either left completely or stepped down from the committee. None of the SSCI members past or present would ever contemplate saying openly what their tenure involved.
[Note: You might remember when Vice Chairman Mark Warner’s text messages surfaced, there was a controlled Republican SSCI member who came to his defense in February of 2018. It was not accidental that exact Senator later became the chair of the SSCI himself. That Republican Senator is Marco Rubio, now vice-chair since the Senate re-flipped back to the optics of Democrat control in 2021.]
All of President Obama’s 2009 intelligence appointments required confirmation from the Senate. The nominees had to first pass through the Democrat controlled SSCI, and then to a full Senate vote where Democrats held a 60 vote majority. Essentially, Obama got everyone he wanted in place easily. Rahm Emmanuel was Obama’s Chief of Staff, and Valerie Jarrett was Senior Advisor.
Tim Geithner was Treasury Secretary in 2010 when the joint DOJ/FBI and IRS operation to target the Tea Party took place after the midterm “shellacking” caused by the Obamacare backlash. Mitch McConnell was Minority Leader in the Senate but supported the targeting of the Tea Party as his Senate colleagues were getting primaried by an angry and effective grassroots campaign. McConnell’s friend, Senator Bob Bennett, getting beaten in Utah was the final straw.
Dirty Harry and Mitch McConnell saw the TEA Party through the same prism. The TEA Party took Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts (Scott Brown); Sharon Angle was about to take out Harry Reid in Nevada; Arlen Spector was taken down in Pennsylvania; Senator Robert Byrd died; Senator Lisa Murkowski lost her primary to Joe Miller in Alaska; McConnell’s nominee Mike Castle lost to Christine O’Donnell in Delaware; Rand Paul won in Kentucky. This is the background. The peasants were revolting…. and visibly angry Mitch McConnell desperately made a deal with the devil to protect himself.
In many ways, the TEA Party movement was/is very similar to the MAGA movement. The difference in 2010 was the absence of a head of the movement, in 2015 Donald Trump became that head figure who benefited from the TEA Party energy. Trump came into office in 2017 with the same congressional opposition as the successful TEA Party candidates in 2011.
Republicans took control of the Senate following the 2014 mid-terms. Republicans took control of the SSCI in January 2015. Senator Richard Burr became chairman of the SSCI, and Dianne Feinstein shifted to Vice-Chair. Dirty Harry Reid left the Senate, and Mitch McConnell took power again.
Republicans were in control of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2015 when the Intelligence Branch operation against candidate Donald Trump was underway. [Feinstein’s staffer, Dan Jones, left the SSCI so he could act as a liaison and political operative between private-sector efforts (Fusion GPS, Chris Steele) and the SSCI.] The SSCI was a participant in that Fusion-GPS/Chris Steele operation, and as a direct consequence Republicans were inherently tied to the problem with President Trump taking office in January of 2017. Indiana Republican Senator Dan Coats was a member of the SSCI.
Bottom line…. When it came to the intelligence system targeting Donald Trump during the 2015/2016 primary, the GOP was just as much at risk as their Democrat counterparts.
When Trump unexpectedly won the 2016 election, the SSCI was shocked more than most. They knew countermeasures would need to be deployed to protect themselves from any exposure of their intelligence conduct. Dianne Feinstein stepped down, and Senator Mark Warner was elevated to Vice Chairman.
Indiana’s own Mike Pence, now Vice President, recommended fellow Hoosier, SSCI Senator Dan Coats, to become President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). [Apply hindsight here]
• To give an idea of the Intelligence Branch power dynamic, remind yourself how House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Chairman Devin Nunes, tried to get access to the DOJ/FBI records of the FISA application used against the Trump campaign via Carter Page.
Remember, Devin Nunes only saw a portion of the FISA trail from his review of a Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) previously given to President Obama. Chairman Nunes had to review the PDB at the White House SCIF due to compartmented intelligence, another example of the silo benefit.
Remember the massive stonewalling and blocking of the DOJ/FBI toward Nunes? Remember the back and forth battle over declassification surrounding the Nunes memo?
Remember, after Nunes went directly to House Speaker Paul Ryan for help (didn’t get any), the DOJ only permitted two members from each party within the HPSCI to review the documents, and only at the DOJ offices of main justice?
Contrast that amount of House Intel Committee railroading and blocking by intelligence operatives in the DOJ, DOJ-NSD and FBI, with the simple request by Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Mark Warner asking to see the Carter Page FISA application and immediately a copy being delivered to him on March 17th 2017.
Can you see which intelligence committee is aligned with the deepest part of the deep state?
The contrast of ideological alignment between the House, Senate and Intelligence Branch is crystal clear when viewed through the prism of cooperation. You can see which legislative committee holds the power and support of the Intelligence Branch. The Senate Intel Committee facilitates the corrupt existence of the IC Branch, so the IC Branch only cooperates with the Senate Intel Committee. It really is that simple.
• The Intelligence Branch carefully selects its own members by controlling how security clearances are investigated and allowed (FBI). The Intelligence Branch also uses compartmentalization of intelligence as a way to keep each agency, and each downstream branch of government (executive, legislative and judicial), at arms length as a method to stop anyone from seeing the larger picture of their activity. I call this the “silo effect“, and it is done by design.
I have looked at stunned faces when I presented declassified silo product from one agency to the silo customers of another. You would be astonished at what they don’t know because it is not in their ‘silo’.
Through the advise and consent rules, the Intelligence Branch uses the SSCI to keep out people they consider dangerous to their ongoing operations. Any appointee to the intelligence community must first pass through the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, before they get a full Senate vote. If the SSCI rejects the candidate, they simply refuse to take up the nomination. The president is then blocked from that appointment. This is what happened with President Trump over-and-over again.
• Additionally, the Intelligence Branch protects itself, and its facilitating allies through the formal classification process. The Intelligence Branch gets to decide unilaterally what information will be released and what information will be kept secret. There is no entity outside the Intelligence Branch, and yes that includes the President of the United States, who can supersede the classification authority of the Intelligence Branch. {Go Deep} and {Go Deep} This is something 99.9% of the people on our side get totally and frustratingly wrong.
No one can declassify, or make public, anything the Intelligence Branch will not agree to. Doubt this? Ask Ric Grenell, John Ratcliffe, or even President Trump himself.
• The classification process is determined inside the Intelligence Branch, all by themselves. They get to choose what rank of classification exists on any work-product they create; and they get to decide what the classification status is of any work product that is created by anyone else. The Intelligence Branch has full control over what is considered classified information and what is not. The Intelligence Branch defines what is a “national security interest” and what is not. A great technique for hiding fingerprints of corrupt and illegal activity.
[For familiar reference see the redactions to Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text messages. The Intelligence Branch does all redactions.]
• Similarly, the declassification process is a request by an agency, even a traditionally superior agency like the President of the United States, to the Intelligence Branch asking for them to release the information. The Intelligence Branch again holds full unilateral control. If the head of the CIA refuses to comply with the declassification instruction of the President, what can the president do except fire him/her? {Again, GO DEEP} How does the President replace the non-compliant cabinet member? They have to go through the SSCI confirmation. See the problem?
Yes, there are ways to break up the Intelligence Branch, but they do not start with any congressional effort. As you can see above, the process is the flaw – not the solution. Most conservative pundits have their emphasis on the wrong syllable. Their cornerstone is false.
For their own self-preservation, the Intelligence Branch has been interfering in our elections for years. The way to tear this apart begins with STATE LEVEL election reform that blocks the Legislative Branch from coordinating with the Intelligence Branch.
The extreme federalism approach is critical and also explains why Joe Biden has instructed Attorney General Merrick Garland to use the full power of the DOJ to stop state level election reform efforts. The worry of successful state level election control is also why the Intelligence Branch now needs to support the federal takeover of elections.
Our elections have been usurped by the Intelligence Branch. Start with honest elections and we will see just how much Democrat AND Republican corruption is dependent on manipulated election results. Start at the state level. Start there…. everything else is downstream.
♦ People want examples, reference points for work the Intelligence Branch conducts, specifically how it protects itself.
Here is an example: Julian Assange.
Yes, the history of the U.S. national security apparatus goes back decades; however, the weaponization of that apparatus, the creation of an apex branch of government, the Intelligence Branch, originated –as we currently feel it– under President Barack Obama.
Obama took the foundational tools created by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and used the intelligence system architecture to create a weapon for use in his fundamental transformation. An alliance of ideologues within government (intel community) and the private sector (big tech and finance) was assembled, and the largest government weapon was created. Think about this every time you take your shoes off at an airport.
After the weapon was assembled and tested (Arab Spring), the Legislative Branch was enjoined under the auspices of a common enemy, Donald J. Trump, an outsider who was a risk to every entity in the institutional construct of Washington DC. Trillions were at stake, and years of affluence and influence were at risk as the unholy alliance was put together.
To understand the risk that Julian Assange represented to U.S. Intelligence Branch interests, it is important to understand just how extensive the operations of the FBI/CIA were in 2016.
It is within the network of foreign and domestic intel operations where Intelligence Branch political tool, FBI Agent Peter Strzok, was working as a bridge between the CIA and FBI counterintelligence operations.
By now, people are familiar with the construct of CIA operations involving Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese professor generally identified as a western intelligence operative who was tasked by the FBI/CIA to run an operation against Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos in both Italy (Rome) and London. {Go Deep}
In a similar fashion, the FBI tasked U.S. intelligence asset Stefan Halper to target another Trump campaign official, Carter Page. Under the auspices of being a Cambridge Professor, Stefan Halper also targeted General Michael Flynn. Additionally, using assistance from a female FBI agent under the false name Azra Turk, Halper also targeted Papadopoulos.
The initial operations to target Flynn, Papadopoulos and Page were all based overseas. This seemingly makes the CIA exploitation of the assets and the targets much easier.
HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes outlined how very specific exculpatory evidence was known to the FBI and yet withheld from the FISA application used against Carter Page that also mentions George Papadopoulos. The FBI also fabricated information in the FISA.
However, there is an aspect to the domestic U.S. operation that also bears the fingerprints of the international intelligence apparatus; only this time, due to the restrictive laws on targets inside the U.S., the CIA aspect is less prominent. This is where FBI Agent Peter Strzok working for both agencies was important.
Remember, it’s clear in the text messages Strzok had a working relationship with what he called their “sister agency”, the CIA. Additionally, former CIA Director John Brennan has admitted Strzok helped write the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which outlines the Russia narrative; and Peter Strzok wrote the July 31st, 2016, “Electronic Communication” that originated FBI operation “Crossfire Hurricane.” Strzok immediately used that EC to travel to London to debrief allied intelligence officials connected to the Australian Ambassador to the U.K, Alexander Downer.
In short, Peter Strzok acted as a bridge between the CIA and the FBI. The perfect type of FBI career agent for the Intelligence Branch and CIA Director John Brennan to utilize.
Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson hired CIA Open Source analyst Nellie Ohr toward the end of 2015; at appropriately the same time as “FBI Contractors” were identified exploiting the NSA database and extracting information on a specific set of U.S. persons, the 2015 GOP candidates for President.
It was also Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson who was domestically tasked with a Russian lobbyist named Natalia Veselnitskaya. A little reported Russian Deputy Attorney General named Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was working double agents for the CIA and Kremlin. Karapetyan was directing the foreign operations of Natalia Veselnitskaya, and Glenn Simpson was organizing her inside the U.S.
Glenn Simpson managed Veselnitskaya through the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. However, once the CIA/Fusion-GPS operation using Veselnitskaya started to unravel with public reporting… back in Russia Deputy AG Karapetyan died in a helicopter crash.
Simultaneously timed in late 2015 through mid 2016, there was a domestic FBI operation using a young Russian named Maria Butina tasked to run up against republican presidential candidates. According to Patrick Byrne, Butina’s private sector handler [NOTE: remember, the public-private sector partnership], it was FBI agent Peter Strzok who was giving Patrick Byrne the instructions on where to send Butina. {Go Deep}
All of this context outlines the extent to which the FBI/CIA was openly involved in constructing a political operation that eventually settled upon anyone in candidate Donald Trump’s orbit. The international operations of the Intelligence Branch were directed by the FBI/CIA; and the domestic operations were coordinated by Peter Strzok operating with a foot in both agencies. [Strzok gets CIA service coin]
Recap: ♦Mifsud tasked against Papadopoulos (CIA). ♦Halper tasked against Flynn (CIA), Page (CIA), and Papadopoulos (CIA). ♦Azra Turk, pretending to be a Halper asst, tasked against Papadopoulos (FBI). ♦Veselnitskaya tasked against Donald Trump Jr (CIA, Fusion-GPS). ♦Butina tasked against Donald Trump Jr (FBI). All of these activities were coordinated.
Additionally, Christopher Steele was a British intelligence officer, hired by Fusion GPS to assemble and launder fraudulent intelligence information within his dossier. And we cannot forget Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, who was recruited by Asst. FBI Director Andrew McCabe to participate in running an operation against the Trump campaign and create the impression of Russian involvement. However, Deripaska refused to participate.
All of this foreign and domestic engagement was directly controlled by collaborating U.S. intelligence agencies from inside the Intelligence Branch. And all of this coordinated activity was intended to give a specific Russia influence/interference impression.
♦ The key point of all that background context is to see how committed the Intelligence Branch was to the constructed narrative of Russia interfering with the 2016 election. The CIA, FBI, and by extension the DOJ and DOJ-NSD, put a hell of a lot of work into it.
We also know that John Durham looked at the construct of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA); and talked to CIA analysts who participated in the construct of the January 2017 report that bolstered the false appearance of Russian interference in the 2016 election. This is important because it ties in to the next part that involves Julian Assange and Wikileaks.
On April 11th, 2019, the Julian Assange indictment was unsealed in the EDVA. From the indictment we discover it was under seal since March 6th, 2018:
The FBI investigation took place prior to December 2017, and it was coordinated through the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) where Dana Boente was U.S. Attorney at the time. The grand jury indictment was sealed from March of 2018 until after Mueller completed his investigation, April 2019.
Why the delay?
What was the DOJ waiting for?
Here’s where it gets interesting….
The FBI submission to the Grand Jury in December of 2017 was four months after Congressman Dana Rohrabacher talked to Julian Assange in August of 2017: “Assange told a U.S. congressman … he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents … did not come from Russia.”
(August 2017, The Hill Via John Solomon) Julian Assange told a U.S. congressman on Tuesday he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents he published during last year’s election did not come from Russia and promised additional helpful information about the leaks in the near future.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who is friendly to Russia and chairs an important House subcommittee on Eurasia policy, became the first American congressman to meet with Assange during a three-hour private gathering at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder has been holed up for years.
Rohrabacher recounted his conversation with Assange to The Hill.
“Our three-hour meeting covered a wide array of issues, including the WikiLeaks exposure of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] emails during last year’s presidential election,” Rohrabacher said, “Julian emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails.”
Pressed for more detail on the source of the documents, Rohrabacher said he had information to share privately with President Trump. (read more)
Knowing how much effort the Intelligence Branch put into the false Russia collusion-conspiracy narrative, it would make sense for the FBI to take keen interest after this August 2017 meeting between Rohrabacher and Assange, monitor all activity, and why the FBI would quickly gather specific evidence (related to Wikileaks and Bradley Manning) for a grand jury by December 2017.
Within three months of the EDVA grand jury, the DOJ generated an indictment and sealed it in March 2018.
The DOJ sat on the indictment while the Mueller/Weissmann probe was ongoing.
As soon as the Mueller/Weissmann probe ended, on April 11th, 2019, a planned and coordinated effort between the U.K. and U.S. was executed; Julian Assange was forcibly arrested and removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and the EDVA indictment was unsealed (link).
As a person who has researched this fiasco; including the ridiculously false 2016 Russian hacking/interference narrative: “17 intelligence agencies”, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) needed for Obama’s anti-Russia narrative in December ’16; and then a month later the ridiculously political Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) in January ’17; this timing against Assange is too coincidental.
It doesn’t take a deep researcher to see the aligned Deep State motive to control Julian Assange. The Weissmann/Mueller report was dependent on Russia cybercrimes for justification, and that narrative was contingent on the Russia DNC hack story which Julian Assange disputes.
♦ This is critical. The Weissmann/Mueller report contains claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers as the central element to the Russia interference narrative in the U.S. election. This claim is directly disputed by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, as outlined during the Dana Rohrabacher interview, and by Julian Assange on-the-record statements.
The predicate for Robert Mueller’s investigation was specifically due to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The fulcrum for this Russia interference claim is the intelligence community assessment; and the only factual evidence claimed within the ICA is that Russia hacked the DNC servers; a claim only made possible by relying on forensic computer analysis from Crowdstrike, a DNC and FBI contractor.
The CIA holds a self-interest in upholding the Russian hacking claim; the FBI holds an interest in maintaining that claim; the U.S. media hold an interest in maintaining that claim. All of the foreign countries whose intelligence apparatus participated with Brennan and Strzok also have a self-interest in maintaining that Russia hacking and interference narrative.
Julian Assange is the only person with direct knowledge of how Wikileaks gained custody of the DNC emails; and Assange has claimed he has evidence it was not from a hack.
This “Russian hacking” claim was ultimately important to the CIA, FBI, DOJ, ODNI and U.K intelligence apparatus, it forms the corner of their justification. With that level of importance, well, right there is the obvious motive to shut Julian Assange down as soon as intelligence officials knew the Weissmann/Mueller report was going to be public.
…. and that’s exactly what they did. They threw a bag over Assange.
♦ COLLAPSED OVERSIGHT – The modern system to ‘check’ the Executive Branch was the creation of the legislative “Gang of Eight,” a legislative oversight mechanism intended to provide a bridge of oversight between the authority of the intelligence community within the Executive Branch.
The Go8 construct was designed to allow the President authority to carry out intelligence operations and provide the most sensitive notifications to a select group within Congress.
The Go8 oversight is directed to the position, not the person, and consists of: (1) The Speaker of the House; (2) The Minority Leader of the House; (3) The Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, HPSCI; (4) The Ranking Member (minority) of the HPSCI; (5) The Leader of the Senate; (6) The Minority Leader of the Senate; (7) The Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, SSCI; and finally (8) the Vice-Chair of the SSCI.
Example: When the Chief Executive (the President) initiates an intelligence operation on behalf of the United States, the President triggers a “finding memo.” In essence, the instruction to the intel agency or agencies to authorize a covert operation. When that process takes place, the Go8 are the first people notified. Depending on the sensitivity of the operation, sometimes the G08 are notified immediately after the operation is conducted. The notification can be a phone call or an in-person briefing.
Because of the sensitivity of their intelligence information, the Gang of Eight hold security clearances that permit them to receive and review all intelligence operations. The intelligence community are also responsible for briefing the Go8 with the same information they use to brief the President.
~ 2021 Gang of Eight ~
The Go8 design is intended to put intelligence oversight upon both political parties in Congress; it is designed that way by informing the minority leaders of both the House and Senate as well as the ranking minority members of the SSCI and HPSCI. Under the concept, the President cannot conduct an intelligence operation; and the intelligence community cannot carry out intelligence gathering operations without the majority and minority parties knowing about it.
The modern design of this oversight system was done to keep rogue and/or corrupt intelligence operations from happening. However, as we shared in the preview to this entire discussion, the process was usurped during the Obama era. {GO DEEP}
Former FBI Director James Comey openly admitted to Congress on March 20, 2017, that the FBI, FBI Counterintelligence Division, DOJ and DOJ-National Security Division, together with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the CIA, had been conducting independent investigations of Donald Trump for over a year without informing the Go8. Comey justified the lack of informing Go8 oversight by saying, “because of the sensitivity of the matter.”
Stupidly, Congress never pressed James Comey on that issue. The arrogance was astounding, and the acceptance by Congress was infuriating. However, that specific example highlighted just how politically corrupt the system had become. In essence, Team Obama usurped the entire design of congressional oversight…. and Congress just brushed it off.
Keep in mind, Comey did not say the White House was unaware; in fact he said exactly the opposite, he said, “The White House was informed through the National Security Council,” (the NSC). The implication, the very direct and specific implication; the unavoidable implication and James Comey admission that everyone just brushed aside, was that President Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, was totally informed of the intelligence operation(s) against Donald Trump. After all, the NSC reports to the National Security Advisor.
Does the January 20, 2017, Susan Rice memo look different now?
Again, no one saw the immediate issue. What Comey just described on that March day in 2017 was the total usurpation of the entire reason the Gang of Eight exists; to eliminate the potential for political weaponization of the Intelligence Community by the executive branch. The G08 notifications to the majority and minority are specifically designed to make sure what James Comey admitted to doing was never supposed to happen.
Team Obama carried out a political operation using the intelligence community and the checks-and-balances in the system were intentionally usurped. This is an indisputable fact.
Worse still, the entire legislative branch of Congress, which specifically includes the Republicans that now controlled the House and Senate, did nothing. They just ignored what was admitted. The usurpation was willfully ignored. The mechanism of the G08 was bypassed without a twitch of condemnation or investigation…. because the common enemy was Donald Trump.
This example highlights the collapse of the system. Obama, the executive branch, collapsed the system by usurping the process; in essence the process became the bigger issue and the lack of immediate legislative branch reaction became evidence of open acceptance. The outcomes of the usurpation played out over the next four years, Donald J. Trump was kneecapped and lost his presidency because of it. However, the bigger issue of the collapse still exists.
The downstream consequence of the Legislative Branch accepting the Executive Branch usurpation meant both intelligence committees were compromised. Additionally, the leadership of both the House and Senate were complicit. Think about this carefully. The Legislative Branch allowance of the intelligence usurpation meant the Legislative Branch was now subservient to the Intelligence Branch.
That’s where we are.
Right now.
That’s where we are.
Term-3 Obama is now back in the White House with Joe Biden.
Term-1 and Term-2 Obama usurped the ‘check and balance‘ within the system and weaponized the intelligence apparatus. During Trump’s term that weaponization was covered up by a compliant congress, and not a single member of the oversight called it out. Now, Term-3 Obama steps back in to continue the cover up and continue the weaponization.
Hopefully, you can now see the scale of the problem that surrounds us with specific citation for what has taken place. What I just explained to you above is not conspiracy theory, it is admitted fact that anyone can look upon. Yet….
Have you seen this mentioned anywhere? Have you seen this called out by anyone in Congress? Have you seen anyone in media (ally or adversary) call this out? Have you seen any member of the Judicial Branch stand up and say wait, what is taking place is not okay? Have you seen a single candidate for elected office point this out? Have you seen anyone advising a candidate point this out?
This is our current status. It is not deniable. The truth exists regardless of our comfort.
Not a single person in power will say openly what has taken place. They are scared of the Fourth Branch. The evidence of what has taken place is right there in front of our face. The words, actions and activities of those who participated in this process are not deniable.
There are only two members of the Gang of Eight who have existed in place from January 2007 (the real beginning of Obama’s term, two years before he took office when the Congress flipped). Only two members of the G08 have been consistently in place from January of 2007 to right now, today. All the others came and went, but two members of the Gang of Eight have been part of that failed and collapsed oversight throughout the past 15 years, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell.
♦ TECHNOLOGY – On a global scale – the modern intelligence gathering networks are now dependent on data collection to execute their intelligence missions. In the digital age nations have been executing various methods to gather that data. Digital surveillance has replaced other methods of interception. Those surveillance efforts have resulted in a coalescing of regional data networks based on historic multi-national relationships.
We have a recent frame of reference for the “U.S. data collection network” within the NSA. Through the allied process the Five Eyes nations all rely on the NSA surveillance database (U.K, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and U.S.) The NSA database provides the digital baseline for intelligence operations in defense of our allies. The portals into the NSA database are essentially an assembly of allies in like-minded ideological connection to the United States.
Unfortunately, there have been some revelations about the NSA database being used to monitor our allies, like in the example of Germany and surveillance on Angela Merkel’s phone. As long as “the good guys” are operating honorably, allies of the United States can feel confident about having protection from the NSA surveillance of global digital data. We warn our friends if we detect something dangerous etc.
The U.S. has nodes on communication pipelines to intercept and extract data. We have also launched hundreds, perhaps thousands, of satellites to conduct surveillance and gather up data. All of this data is fed into the NSA database where it is monitored (presumably) as a national security mechanism, and in defense of our allies.
However, what about data collection or data networks that are outside the NSA database? What do our enemies do? The NSA database is just one intelligence operation of digital surveillance amid the entire world, and we do not allow access by adversaries we are monitoring. So what do they do? What do our allies do who might not trust the United States due to past inconsistencies, ie. the Middle East?
The answers to those questions highlight other data collection networks. So a brief review of the major players is needed.
♦ CHINA – China operates their own database. They, like the NSA, scoop up data for their system. Like us, China launches satellites and deploys other electronic data collection methods to download into their database. This is why the issues of electronic devices manufactured in China becomes problematic. Part of the Chinese data collection system involves the use of spyware, hacking and extraction.
Issues with Chinese communication company Huawei take on an added dimension when you consider the goal of the Chinese government to conduct surveillance and assemble a network of data to compete with the United States via the NSA. Other Chinese methods of surveillance and data-collection are less subversive, as in the examples of TicTok and WeChat. These are Chinese social media companies that are scraping data just like the NSA scrapes data from Facebook, Twitter and other Silicon Valley tech companies. [ Remember, the Intelligence Branch is a public-private partnership. ]
♦ RUSSIA – It is very likely that Russia operates their own database. We know Russia launches satellites, just like China and the USA, for the same purposes. Russia is also very proficient at hacking into other databases and extracting information to store and utilize in their own network. The difference between the U.S., China and Russia is likely that Russia spends more time on the hacking aspect because they do not generate actual technology systems as rapidly as the U.S. and China.
The most recent database creation is an outcome of an ally having to take action because they cannot rely on the ideology of the United States remaining consistent, as the administrations ping-pong based on ideology.
♦ SAUDI ARABIA – Yes, in 2016 we discovered that Saudi Arabia was now operating their own intelligence data-gathering operation. It would make sense, given the nature of the Middle East and the constant fluctuations in political support from the United States. It is a lesson the allied Arab community and Gulf Cooperation Council learned quickly when President Obama went to Cairo in 2009 and launched the Islamist Spring (Arab Spring) upon them.
I have no doubt the creation of the Saudi intelligence network was specifically because the Obama administration started supporting radical Islamists within the Muslim Brotherhood, and threw fuel on the fires of extremism all over the Arab world.
Think about it., What would you do if you were Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan, Oman or Yemen and you knew the United States could just trigger an internal uprising of al-Qaeda, ISIS and the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood to seek your destruction?
Without a doubt, those urgent lessons from 2009, 2010, 2011 triggered the formation of the Arab Intelligence Network as a network to defend itself with consistency. They assembled the network and activated it in 2017 as pictured above.
♦ Israel – Along a similar outlook to the Arab network, no doubt Israel operates an independent data collection system as a method of protecting itself from ever-changing U.S. politics amid a region that is extremely hostile to its very existence. Like the others, Israel launches proprietary satellites, and we can be sure they use covert methods to gather electronic data just like the U.S. and China.
As we have recently seen in the Pegasus story, Israel creates spyware programs that are able to track and monitor cell phone communications of targets. The spyware would not work unless Israel had access to some network where the phone meta-data was actually stored. So yeah, it makes sense for Israel to operate an independent intelligence database.
♦ Summary: As we understand the United States Intelligence Branch of government as the superseding entity that controls the internal politics of our nation, we also must consider that multiple nations have the same issue. There are major intelligence networks around the world beside the NSA “Five-Eyes” database. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel all operate proprietary databases deploying the same tools and techniques for assembly.
The geopolitical conflict that has always existed has now shifted into a digital battle-space. The Intelligence Agencies from these regions are now operating as the backbone of the government that uses them, and has become dependent on them. [<- Reread that].
Once you accept the digital-era intelligence apparatus of China, Russia, Saudi-Arabia, The United States and Israel, are now the primary national security mechanisms for stabilization of government; then you accept the importance of those intelligence operations.
Once you understand how foundational those modern intelligence operations have become for the stability and continuity of those governments…… then you begin to understand just how the United States intelligence community became more important than the government that created it.
♦ Public Private Partnership – The modern Fourth Branch of Government is only possible because of a Public-Private partnership with the intelligence apparatus. You do not have to take my word for it, the partnership is so brazen they have made public admissions.
The biggest names in Big Tech announced in June their partnership with the Five Eyes intelligence network, ultimately controlled by the NSA, to: (1) monitor all activity in their platforms; (2) identify extremist content; (3) look for expressions of Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE); and then, (4) put the content details into a database where the Five Eyes intelligence agencies (U.K., U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand) can access it.
Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft are all partnering with the intelligence apparatus. It might be difficult to fathom how openly they admit this, but they do. Look at this sentence in the press release (emphasis mine):
[…] “The Group will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.”
Think about that sentence structure very carefully. They are “adding to” the preexisting list…. admitting the group (aka Big Tech) already have access to the the intelligence-sharing database… and also admitting there is a preexisting list created by the Five Eyes consortium.
Obviously, who and what is defined as “extremist content” will be determined by the Big Tech insiders themselves. This provides a gateway, another plausible deniability aspect, to cover the Intelligence Branch from any oversight.
When the Intelligence Branch within government wants to conduct surveillance and monitor American citizens, they run up against problems due to the Constitution of the United States. They get around those legal limitations by sub-contracting the intelligence gathering, the actual data-mining, and allowing outside parties (contractors) to have access to the central database.
The government cannot conduct electronic searches (4th amendment issue) without a warrant; however, private individuals can search and report back as long as they have access. What is being admitted is exactly that preexisting partnership. The difference is that Big Tech will flag the content from within their platforms, and now a secondary database filled with the extracted information will be provided openly for the Intelligence Branch to exploit.
The volume of metadata captured by the NSA has always been a problem because of the filters needed to make the targeting useful. There is a lot of noise in collecting all data that makes the parts you really want to identify more difficult to capture. This new admission puts a new massive filtration system in the metadata that circumvents any privacy protections for individuals.
Previously, the Intelligence Branch worked around the constitutional and unlawful search issue by using resources that were not in the United States. A domestic U.S. agency, working on behalf of the U.S. government, cannot listen on your calls without a warrant. However, if the U.S. agency sub-contracts to say a Canadian group, or foreign ally, the privacy invasion is no longer legally restricted by U.S. law.
What was announced in June 2021 is an alarming admission of a prior relationship along with open intent to define their domestic political opposition as extremists.
July 26 (Reuters) – A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias, the group told Reuters.
Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so has largely consisted of content from Islamist extremist organizations such as Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos – often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence – and other publications and links flagged by U.N. initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes, adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.
The firms, which include Twitter (TWTR.N) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube, share “hashes,” unique numerical representations of original pieces of content that have been removed from their services. Other platforms use these to identify the same content on their own sites in order to review or remove it. (read more)
The influence of the Intelligence Branch now reaches into our lives, our personal lives. In the decades before 9/11/01 the intelligence apparatus intersected with government, influenced government, and undoubtedly controlled many institutions with it. The legislative oversight function was weak and growing weaker, but it still existed and could have been used to keep the IC in check. However, after the events of 9/11/01, the short-sighted legislative reactions opened the door to allow the surveillance state to weaponize.
After the Patriot Act was triggered, not coincidentally only six weeks after 9/11, a slow and dangerous fuse was lit that ends with the intelligence apparatus being granted a massive amount of power. The problem with assembled power is always what happens when a Machiavellian network takes control over that power and begins the process to weaponize the tools for their own malicious benefit. That is exactly what the installation of Barack Obama was all about.
The Obama network took pre-assembled intelligence weapons we should never have allowed to be created, and turned those weapons into tools for his radical and fundamental change. The target was the essential fabric of our nation. Ultimately, this corrupt political process gave power to create the Fourth Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. From that perspective the fundamental change was successful.
♦ WHAT NOW? There is a way to stop and deconstruct the Intelligence Branch, but it requires some outside-the-box thinking and reliance on the Constitution as a tool to radically change one element within government. In the interim, we must remain focused on the three tiers that we need for success.
• Tier One is “tactical civics” at a local level. Engaged and active citizen participation at the community, city, town and hamlet level of society. This is what might be described as grassroots level, school board level; city council level; county commissioner level.
• Tier Two is “extreme federalism” at a state level. Engaged and active citizen participation through your State House and State Senate representative. This is state level assembly and action demands upon the State House, State Senate and State Governor.
• Tier Three the challenge of “federal offices” on a national level {Go Deep}. This is the part where we need President Donald Trump, and his power to confront the issues comes directly from us.
I am confident that ultimately “We The People” will win. How we can execute the solution is more challenging; in the interim, tactical civics and extreme federalism are doable right now, in this next 2024 election cycle.
It sucks that a UniParty congress extended FISA-702. However, even if the hail-Mary pass on Monday fails, FISA was still extended for only two-years.
Before getting into bigger picture analysis and intellectual discussion about FISA and the 702 reauthorizations, let me just reveal some inside DC crap that drives me nuts and at the same time will help y’all understand the nonsense.
First, the Intelligence Community (IC) tells congress, particularly the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, that all hell will break loose if they don’t reauthorize full electronic surveillance of Americans. Congress is petrified of the IC.
Speaker Johnson and all of the key participants are totally siloed from understanding that 702 has nothing to do with incidental collection of American data whilst the honorable IC were doing foreign intercepts. Johnson and most republicans believe the IC nonsense. They really do.
The politicians and their key staff cannot fathom how the FBI, DOJ, NSD, DHS and Contractors use this database to conduct political and “other” (think corporate espionage for sale) surveillance. They really do think the IC is full of honorable rank-and-file. They are inside a DC bubble.
Second, the IC argument is now something akin to we have let thousands of terrorists into the country through the southern border crisis. They say: “my god, we need to monitor the terrorists, and if you take away 702 the foreign terror cells will activate and start killing us all. Do you want that blood on your hands?” You cannot take away surveillance tools.
Third, FISA 702 reauthorization is used as a bargaining chip by people who don’t want to get caught up in the surveillance.
The DC conversations are something like, “ok, we’ll reauthorize it, but you cannot use it against us – and all the sex parties and perverted stuff we do when no one is around, you must promise to keep our secrets hidden“… Yes, this is why the IC agree to accept a reauthorization that exempts congress. The IC keep the blackmail, just promise not to use it.
We The People do not have any friends in DC on this issue. The democrats will reauthorize 702 to continue exploiting surveillance authority – don’t forget over 10,000 log-in portals with access to the NSA database exist, including the workstation at Perkins Coie that ties into the NSA database {GO DEEP}.
President Trump finally opposes the FISA system – writ large – and THAT is progress.
More soon….
(An Accurate Depiction )House Speaker Mike Johnson
President Donald J Trump seeks optimal solutions for all challenges. Internally he has his own set of standards and crystal-clear understanding of what he would want in any given situation; this is not difficult for a clear brain to accomplish.
However, in the world of multi-interests and larger group needs, in this case an entire nation of individuals and groups, President Trump knows that optimal solutions are best found closest to the work, closest to the source of the individual hearts. Pragmatic leadership is often about optimal solutions. WATCH:
He/We will win.
They are increasingly desperate. The need for control is a reaction to fear. The next week to 10 days is critical.
I have much to share with our fellowship. You will journey with me.
Ex-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer at the State of the Union address on Tuesday, March 1, 2022.
Stephen Breyer, who sat on the U.S. Supreme Court for nearly three decades before resigning in 2022, has written a book, like so many others who come out of the Washington, D.C., swamp, and is on a tour promoting it.
As part of those interviews, he’s lashed out at the rest of the court for overturning the faulty and unconstitutional Roe v. Wade decision that created a “right” to abortion, and also promoted his personal ideology of a changeable U.S. Constitution.
“The learned justice says his method of judging is needed as a model for successors because ‘the world does change,’ so if the court doesn’t interpret the Constitution as evolvable, too, ‘we will have a Constitution that no one wants.’ Therefore, he says repeatedly, his method ‘involves purposes, consequences, values, and sometimes much more.’
“This sounds high-minded and reasonable, but it is bunk. Even worse, it is a power grab subject to no limiting principle, especially when he goes into an open-ended ‘much more’ phase. Breyer treats as paramount the jurist’s subjective assessment of ‘values and sometimes much more,’ as if he possesses Olympian wisdom about such matter above that of mere mortals. This would turn representative democracy into an elitist oligarchy, a rule by nine supposedly wise men and women, against America’s constitutional design that deliberately separates, disperses, and blends power in multitudinous ways intended to safeguard liberty.”
Breyer quit the court at a time when Joe Biden was able to push Ketanji Jackson, a far-left ideologue adored by leftists, onto the bench.
The Examiner noted that Breyer’s comments suggest he basically puts judges “above the law.”
Breyer’s writings claim to make a case for using “pragmatism,” or adjusting the Constitution to circumstances, rather than reading it as it was originally written.
“What Breyer’s suggestion amounts to is the anti-democratic idea that judges should be free to twist what the law says to suit their own prejudices — that is, they should be above the law rather than servants of it.”
The piece explained what America’s founders set up: “In a republic, applying ‘values’ and trying to create the right ‘consequences’ is the job not of judges but of the people’s elected representatives, or of the people themselves. The Constitution, as fundamental law enacted by the people, is supreme. Statutes written via representative procedures are next. The reason judges, ultimately Supreme Court justices, are final arbiters of what the law means is not because they possess superior moral or value-based perspicacity, but because they are supposed to be the most learned in parsing the words of laws to ensure they are applied faithfully. Jurists are supposed to be guided and humbly governed by the words of the law, not by willful masters over them.”
It continued, “Breyer’s ‘pragmatism’ … invites the mischief of judicial willfulness, unmoored from objective restraints, applied by nine people acting as philosopher kings.”
Hugh Hewitt (Salem Media) is one of the key media control operatives on the right, fully controlled by the multinationals who organize controlled Republican politics, who attempts to manipulate political outcomes through the pressure of his platform. Why any conservative would appear on the Hugh Hewitt broadcast is beyond my understanding.
In this interview, Hewitt starts shaping the conversation based on the editorial priorities handed to him by his benefactors. However, that said, President Trump does a great job cutting through the majority of the Hewitt bait & shaping and he finds a way to explain his message despite Hewitt’s interventions.
WATCH:
Hugh Hewitt, on behalf of the corporations and banking interests who organize their insurance policies, would love to influence the vice presidential selection.
Joe Biden’s administration established a covert court that safeguards the privacy rights of Europeans under U.S. law, but not those of Americans, Politico reported.
The Biden administration created the Data Protection Review Court (DPRC) at an unspecified time and location after receiving authorization under an October 2022 executive order, which resolved a legal clash between European and American laws that hindered the profitable exchange of consumer data for three years, according to Politico. Europeans, however, have access to the DPRC while Americans do not, even if they think they are subject to inappropriate government surveillance.
Americans have the option to seek recourse for surveillance in federal court, but it is contingent on demonstrating tangible injury or wrongdoing, which is exceedingly difficult to prove, according to Politico.
“We’re in an odd place when non-residents have easier access to a place to raise their concerns about U.S. government surveillance than Americans do,” former chair of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) Adam Klein told Politico.
Europeans’ private data can legally be surveilled by United States intelligence agencies, but the DPRC gives them protection, according to Politico. European Commission (EC) officials expressed approval in July.
The DPRC received its panel of eight judges in November, but there is not much else known about the court, according to Politico. Its location is unknown and the Department of Justice (DOJ) has not acknowledged any details about its caseload, nor will the court disclose its decisions.
Plaintiffs are prohibited from showing up to the court in person and, instead, have legal representation through a designated special advocate appointed by the United States attorney general, according to Politico.
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A DOJ official conceded the secretive nature of the DPRC, but emphasized to Politico the need for tackling government surveillance issues in a covert manner.
“There’s actual honest-to-goodness, something going on behind that, which is the investigation the [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] does and the decision of the court,” the official told Politico.
The PCLOB will conduct oversight of the DPRC in a yearly review under the October executive order, which will lead to its transparency about caseloads, decisions and intelligence agency compliance, officials told Politico. A classified version of the yearly review will go to Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, congressional intelligence committees and intelligence community leaders, while the public will receive an unclassified version.
“We’re going to try to make as much information public as possible, because the whole point is to inspire confidence that we’re conducting activities appropriately,” the DOJ official told Politico.
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The White House and DOJ did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas claims, “The border is secure,” and President Joe Biden said, “The most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy.” Not only are they both lying, but they are also ignoring the reports produced by the US Intelligence Community, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Defense (DoD).
Biden appointees, including the president himself, have claimed that the border is secure and that white Christian nationalists are the greatest threats to national security. These statements weaken our ability to address real threats. If the border is secure, then funding for additional security would be unjustified. And if Biden starts wasting public funds and security resources to hunt down white Christians, he will be leaving the country open to attacks from the real threats: China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Islamic extremists.
President Trump said he would deport illegal aliens. Kamala Harris went on TV and said that she would “fight for their rights.” This statement presumes that illegal aliens have a right to stay in the United States. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas actually said, “From day one, this Administration has made clear that a border wall is not the answer.” And certainly, no wall is needed if you do not wish to keep people out.
While the Biden White House and many of his appointees are misrepresenting reality, the intelligence agencies, Department of Defense (DoD), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), apart from Mayorkas, are doing their duty by identifying the real threats. The Annual Threat Assessment of the United States Intelligence Community identifies the greatest national security threats as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The term “white supremacy” is mentioned only once, on page 30. By contrast, the word China appears 91 times and has its own entry in the table of contents. White Supremacy is listed as one of many racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVE). The report does not say that it is a primary threat. In fact, it reports that, across the entire globe, only 27 people, most of whom were not American, were killed by RMVE since 2022.
The Department of Defense (DoD) National Defense Strategy Report similarly recognizes China and Russia as the two largest threats, followed by North Korea and Iran. The report does not mention white supremacy at all.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recognizes terrorism, both foreign and domestic, as the primary threat. This includes radicalization by foreign entities and the rebuilding of al-Qa’ida and ISIS. After terrorism, DHS expects “illegal drugs produced in Mexico and sold in the United States will continue to kill more Americans than any other threat.” Last year, there was a record number of encounters with migrants at the southern border, including “a growing number of individuals in the Terrorist Screening Data Set (TSDS), also known as the ‘watchlist.’”
This brings us to the false claim that the border is secure.
Trump was attacked for allegedly saying that migrants are not human. What he was actually saying was that with open borders, we are allowing gang members to enter the country, and the gang members have committed such atrocities that they are not human. He was also attacked for saying that Mexico is not sending us their best and their brightest; they are sending us drug dealers and rapists. He did not claim that all migrants were criminals. He said that some were good people. But he was 100% correct in saying that some are gang members, drug dealers, and criminals.
The US permits about 770,000 immigrants to be naturalized each year, which is more than the rest of the world combined. By definition, those who do not qualify to be admitted legally are not the best and the brightest. Trump’s claims are not only supported by logic but also by the reports of U.S. authorities, including DHS, the Intelligence Community, local media along the border, and The Office of Justice Programs, among others.
FBI Director Wray confirmed that the border crisis is a national security threat. The DEA reported that “Fentanyl is the greatest threat facing Americans today.” Fentanyl is manufactured in Mexico by cartels, using chemicals from China. It is then smuggled over the border by illegal aliens and distributed through street gangs with ties to the cartel. Often, these gangs have members who are illegal aliens and have been trafficked to the United States to work in illicit businesses such as drug dealing, prostitution, and even murder.
The Annual Threat Assessment of the United States Intelligence Community states that Mexico-based Transnational Crime Organizations (TCOs) “are the dominant producers and suppliers of illicit drugs to the U.S. market, including fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine, and South American-sourced cocaine.”
The Office of Justice Programs issued a report outlining the danger posed by cross-border gangs operating through the southern border. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wrote, “Transnational criminal street gangs such as MS-13 represent a significant threat to public safety.” A report by the Air Command and Staff College Air University stated, “Mexican Cartels along our Southern border pose a serious threat to our national safety and public health.” Furthermore, the report explained why the cartel threat is increasing: “As their influence and sophistication grow and the connection between them and terrorist organizations increases, the cartels become a larger threat to our national security.”
In conclusion, apart from Biden, neither the intelligence community, DEA, DHS, FBI, ICE, nor the DoD identified white supremacists as the greatest threat to national security. Additionally, no one other than Mayorkas claimed that the border was secure. By ignoring the reports of our intelligence and security agencies, the administration is increasing the threat to our national security.
Jesse Watters ran a devastating segment last night on radical Judge Juan Merchan who silenced President Donald Trump from talking about his family’s financial ties to the current junk case he is presiding over against Donald Trump in New York City. Judge Merchan should be removed for his conflicts. This is peak corruption and cannot stand.
As Jesse Watters outlined succinctly in his monologue, “Trump is banned from talking about the judge’s family. Why? Because the judge’s family was paid by the Biden campaign. The judge’s family is currently being paid by Adam Schiff over $10 million.”
“The judge is threatening to put Trump in jail for pointing out that his liberal family is getting rich off this trial and richer if he’s convicted.” “The judge’s daughter isn’t seven. She’s 34. He’s not attacking her. He’s just saying what she does for a living. How’s that an attack? He just wants a new judge. One whose family isn’t funded by Democrats.” WATCH:
Before getting into the weeds, here’s the big picture baseline. All documents and records created within the executive branch are created for the benefit of the head of the Executive Branch, the president.
There is no entity, organization, assembly, institution, person or individual, above the President of the United States. The president holds absolute power and absolute immunity. Everyone within the executive branch works at the pleasure of the president, and all work products are created for his administration. This is the plenary power of the president.
The entire documents case in Florida rests on the principle that another entity supersedes the president within the executive branch. Some unknown, unnamed bureaucracy can override the president and decide for themselves what would be called a “presidential record” and what would be called “classified information.”
Jack Smith, Norm Eisen (pictured left, red tie) and Andrew Weissmann each argue that some other entity rests atop the president and can make this decision.
Judge Aileen Cannon has not determined which constitutional argument is correct, and has told the parties to create jury instructions both ways. The Lawfare crew of Smith, Eisen and Weissmann are going bananas.
[…] Cannon’s first scenario would allow the jury to make a factual determination about whether a former president deemed a record to be personal or official under the PRA. That is nonsensical – presidents are not allowed to designate official records as personal ones, so there is no factual issue for a jury to resolve.
A different set of laws govern the classification process and the rules for handling highly sensitive classified documents — not the PRA. They include Executive Order 13526. One of the authors of this column (Eisen) helped write that executive order. The 11th Circuit has already established that those rules fully apply to former presidents.
Cannon seems to think that the PRA somehow supersedes the executive order and the rest of federal law pertaining to the handling of classified materials. It does not. On the contrary, the PRA defines “personal records” as “all documentary materials … of a purely private or nonpublic character which do not relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.” That cannot possibly include highly classified battle plans, nuclear secrets and the other official documents at issue in this criminal prosecution.
That rules out Cannon’s first hypothetical. But as Smith points out in his filing, the second alternative is just as bad. She made up a legal standard, asking both sides to assume that Trump could have deemed a record personal by simply not including it with the records transmitted to the National Archives and Records Administration at the end of his term. If this were true, the mere fact that Trump took the documents with him from the White House would inherently turn them into personal records.
Of course, Trump leaped at this interpretation, fashioning proposed jury instructions that would inevitably result in his acquittal. But, as Smith noted, this approach has no basis in the law — or the facts. Even Trump himself does not seem to have considered classified documents personal after he left the White House, as evidenced in an audio recording CNN obtained last year in which Trump, during a conversation at his Bedminster, New Jersey, estate in 2021, discussed documents remaining classified even though he took them with him upon leaving office. Smith hits this point hard, arguing that Trump’s position that records are personal was “invented” when the controversy over the documents began to emerge in February 2022, over a year after Trump left the White House. (read more)
NarrowPathMinistries 
