Email/Dossier/Govt Corruption Investigations

December 2, 2022 – Twitter Files: Musk reveals what led to Twitter suppressing Hunter Biden story

(…) “Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters. Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly,” Taibbi wrote. “By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: ‘More to review from the Biden team.’ The reply would come back: ‘Handled.'”

Taibbi shared a screenshot of that October 2020 exchange featuring links to tweets Biden’s team allegedly wanted taken down. Many of them were to tweets featuring pornographic images of Hunter Biden found in his laptop, according to Washington Free Beacon investigative reporter Andrew Kerr.

Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However…  This system wasn’t balanced,” Taibbi wrote. “It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right.”

“The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read. However, it’s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives,” the journalist teased.

He then quickly pivoted to the “Twitter Files” regarding the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Taibbi tweeted “there’s no evidence – that I’ve seen” that the federal government had a role in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story but that “the decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role.”

Taibbi then shared a screenshot of an exchange between Gadde, Twitter’s former Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth and Twitter spokesman Trenton Kennedy, who wrote “I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe.”

“Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?” Twitter’s former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman similarly asked at the time, according to a separate screenshot shared by Taibbi.

Twitter’s former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker replied, “I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked” but added “it’s reasonable for us to assume that they may have been and that caution is warranted.”

;

Taibbi then revealed that Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna reached out to Gadde about the “backlash re speech,” noting that Khanna “was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern.”

Gadde responded to the California lawmaker by “diving into the weeds” of Twitter’s policy, but Khanna warned Gadde “this seems [to be] a violation of the 1st Amendment principles.”

“I say this as a total Biden partisan and convinced that he didn’t do anything wrong. But the story now has become more about censorship than relatively innocuous emails and it’s becoming a bigger deal than it would have been,” Khanna wrote. (Read more: Fox News, 12/2/2022)  (Archive)

December 4, 2022 – Twitter Files: James Baker re-emerges in the Twitter files

Former FBI general counsel James A. Baker leaves Sussmann trial on May 19, 2022. (Credit:Ron Sachs/CNP for NY Post)

“As thousands of Twitter documents are released on the company’s infamous censorship program, much has been confirmed about the use of back channels by Biden and Democratic officials to silence critics on the social media platform. However, one familiar name immediately popped out in the first batch of documents released through journalist Matt Taibbi: James Baker. For many, James Baker is fast becoming the Kevin Bacon of the Russian collusion scandals.

Baker has been featured repeatedly in the Russian investigations launched by the Justice Department, including the hoax involving the Russian Alfa Bank. When Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann wanted to plant the bizarre false claim of a secret communications channel between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, Baker was his go-to, speed-dial contact. (Baker would later testify at Sussmann’s trial). Baker’s name also appeared prominently in controversies related to the other Russian-related FBI allegations against Trump. He was effectively forced out due to his role and reportedly found himself under criminal investigation. He became a defender of the Russian investigations despite findings of biased and even criminal conduct. He was also a frequent target of Donald Trump on social media, including Twitter. Baker responded with public criticism of Trump for his “false narratives.”

After leaving the FBI, Twitter seemed eager to hire Baker as deputy general counsel. Ironically, Baker soon became involved in another alleged back channel with a presidential campaign. This time it was Twitter that maintained the non-public channels with the Biden campaign (and later the White House). Baker soon weighed in with the same signature bias that characterized the Russian investigations.

Weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post ran an explosive story about a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden that contained emails and records detailing a multimillion dollar influence peddling operation by the Biden family. Not only was Joe Biden’s son Hunter and brother James involved in deals with an array of dubious foreign figures, but Joe Biden was referenced as the possible recipient of funds from these deals.

The Bidens had long been accused of influence peddling, nepotism, and other forms of corruption. Moreover, the campaign was not denying that the laptop was Hunter Biden’s and key emails could be confirmed from the other parties involved. However, at the request of the “Biden team” and Democratic operatives, Twitter moved to block the story. It even suspended those who tried to share the allegations with others, including the White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who was suspended for linking to the scandal.

(…) Baker quickly jumped in to support the censorship and said that “it’s reasonable for us to assume that they may have been [hacked] and that caution is warranted.” (Read more: Jonathan Turley, 12/4/2022)  (Archive)

December 6, 2022 – Elon Musk “exited” former FBI general counsel, James Baker, from Twitter

December 8, 2022 – Daniel Kimmage deposition reveals State Department was funding fact-checkers

Attorneys representing the Missouri and Louisiana AGs in their case against the government have uncovered that the State Department was funding fact checkers possibly in the US.

(…) The Gateway Pundit readers know that The Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft is a co-Plaintiff, along with several doctors and a Louisiana news outlet, in Missouri and Louisiana lawsuit against the Biden Administration.  The AGs of Missouri and Louisiana are suing the Biden Administration (Missouri, et al, v. Biden, et al), the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the DOJ, Jen Psaki, Anthony Fauci, Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, and other federal agents and agencies for colluding with Big Tech to censor Americans all across the nation.

Daniel Kimmage (Credit: video screenshot)

(…) The Attorneys General recently deposed Daniel Kimmage, the Acting Coordinator for the Global Engagement Center at the Department of State.

The Gateway Pundit tonight can confirm that we’ve uncovered something shocking and potentially corrupt or even criminal that was revealed during his deposition.

Krimmage held the following role from February 22, 2021, through June 30, 2021:

…the Acting Coordinator for the Global Engagement Center at the Department of State. In this role, Mr. Kimmage leads [led] efforts to coordinate and synchronize U.S. government communications efforts designed to counter terrorist recruitment and state-sponsored propaganda and disinformation.

Based on Kimmage’s testimony we’ve uncovered information that the State Department was funding online fact-checkers.  Kimmage doesn’t state whether it was foreign or domestic fact-checkers that the State Department was funding.

In the deposition in the Missouri and Louisiana case against the government, Kimmage shared the following:

(Page 183 / Lines 1-4 & 17-25)

1     Q. Has the GEC ever supported
2     fact-checking organizations inside the United
3     States?
4      A. I don’t believe so.

17    Q. What fact-checkers do you work
18    with?
19    A. I believe the Pointer(sp) Institute is
20    the only one I recall. I don’t recall the —
21    the specific organizations.
22    Q. Where is that? Where is that
23    located?
24    A. I don’t recall.
25    Q. Is that a foreign or domestic

(Page 184 / Lines 1-4 & 12-23 )

1      fact-checking organization?
2      A. I don’t — I don’t recall. I don’t
3      recall anything beyond the name.
12    Q. Do you have any understanding of
13    how GEC works with fact-checking organizations,
14    in general?
15    A. I believe it would be identifying
16    an organization that works in a location where a
17    foreign propaganda disinformation actor, like
18    Russia or China, would be active and supporting
19    them in some fashion.
20    Q. What kind of fashion?
21    A. Support could range from a grant or
22    a financial support to information sharing or
23    training in tools and techniques.

Kimmage must have tried to hide who that entity was that he was talking about.

The Gateway Pundit found that Poynter Institute operates Politifact one of the most notorious fact-checkers in the business.  The Poynter Institute also brags about teaching classes on ethics.  This and all the while the Institute according to Kimmage was being given grants by the US State Department.

The Poynter Institute does mention that it is supported by government agencies:

We rely on support from several funding sources who value the essential role of the free press in our society, including corporate partners, philanthropic foundations, government agencies and individual donors.

(Read more: The Gateway Pundit, 12/8/2022)  (Archive)

December 9, 2022 – Twitter Files: Twitter’s chief censor, Yoel Roth, met weekly with US intelligence officials while Trump was in office

“Twitter’s former Head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth, had weekly meetings with the FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) at least as far back as 2020, when former President Donald Trump was still in office, internal communications between Twitter staff obtained by journalist Matt Taibbi Friday reveal.

Yoel Roth (Credit: screenshot/CNN)

Yoel participated in one such weekly meeting shortly after the company’s moderation team was thrown into a crisis following its decision to suppress an October 2020 New York Post story concerning a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, according to Taibbi. Roth appeared to explicitly ask the government officials in the meeting to “share anything useful” concerning the laptop story, but they apparently declined to do so.

“We blocked the NYP story, then we unblocked it (but said the opposite), then we said we unblocked it… and now we’re in a messy situation where our policy is in shambles, comms is angry, reporters think we’re idiots, and we’re refactoring an exceedingly complex policy 18 days out from the election. In short [fuck my life],” Roth apparently wrote in an internal message, Taibbi reported. “Weekly sync with FBI/DHS/DNI re: election security. The meeting happened about 15 minutes after the aforementioned Hacked Materials implosion; the government declined to share anything useful when asked.”

Roth’s weekly meetings with government officials may have involved separate meetings, with not all agencies present, Taibbi reported. “I have to miss the FBI and DHS meetings today, unfortunately,” Roth wrote to a Twitter staffer, indicating that the two agencies may not have been scheduled to meet with him at once.

The FBI also reported tweets to Twitter, one of which former Republican Councilor John Basham of Tippecanoe County, Indiana, posted, which alleged that “Between 2% & 25% Of Ballots By Mail Are Being REJECTED For Errors!” according to Taibbi. After deliberation, the team applied a “Learn how voting is safe and secure” label to Bashman’s tweet at Roth’s discretion, with one employee noting internally “it’s totally normal to have a 2% error rate,” Taibbi reported.” (Read more: The Daily Caller, 12/09/2022) (Archive)

December 9, 2022 – Twitter Files reveal employees built blacklists, prevented disfavored tweets from trending, and limited the visibility of accounts

(Read more: @bariweiss/Twitter, 12/9/2022)

December 9, 2022 – FBI reveals it did a forensic analysis and report on Seth Rich’s DNC work computer and they want to keep it secret

Seth Rich is pictured on a poster created by police officials to urge people with information about his murder to come forward. (Credit: Metropolitan Police Department)

“The FBI not only has possession of a laptop computer owned by Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich—who was murdered in 2016 by unknown assailants—but a report detailing forensic imaging of what’s being described as Rich’s work computer, the bureau revealed in a new filing.

The FBI’s records office located the report while searching for the work computer, Michael Seidel, chief of the office, said in a sworn declaration filed with a federal court in Texas on Dec. 9.

He described the document as “a three (3) page forensic report detailing the actions performed by an outside entity to image the work laptop.”

The report was among four documents that never had been disclosed by the FBI in relation to Rich’s case.

Journalist Sy Hersh said a source told him around 2017 about an FBI report on Rich. According to the source, Rich’s computer showed the DNC staffer had relayed DNC documents to WikiLeaks, a pro-transparency group. Hersh spoke about the source’s claims during a phone call with Ed Butowsky, an investor who later retracted claims about Rich’s brother Aaron being a WikiLeaks source, and discussed the call during a deposition.

(…) The new records were found after the records office contacted an unnamed FBI special agent during its search for Rich’s work computer, according to Seidel.

The other records include a letter from a third party that accompanied the work computer and two FBI chain of custody forms.

None of the records were indexed to Rich inside of the bureau’s central records system, and neither the forensic report nor the custody forms mention Rich’s name, according to the FBI. They also weren’t included in an electronic file created for Rich’s case.

The agent claimed that disclosure of the records would harm an FBI investigation into the allegations that Russians had hacked into U.S. systems.

The FBI now wants the court to agree to keep the new records shielded from Brian Huddleston, a Texas resident who filed a lawsuit against the bureau for ignoring a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records on Rich.” (Read more: The Epoch Times)  (Archive)

December 9, 2022 – Twitter Files: How Twitter removes Donald Trump

(Read more: @mtaibbi/Twitter, 12/9/2022)

December 11, 2022 – Twitter Files: How Michelle Obama was personally involved in Trump’s ban

(Credit: Gateway Pundit)

“The latest installment of the “Twitter Flies” notes the extent to which public pressure as well as private machinations contributed to Twitter’s decision to ban former President Donald Trump in January 2021.

Former First Lady Michelle Obama posted an irate tweet on Jan. 7, 2021, one day after the Capitol incursion.

“Now is the time for Silicon Valley companies to stop enabling this monstrous behavior — and go even further than they have already by permanently banning this man from their platforms and putting in place policies to prevent their technologies from being used by the nation’s leaders to fuel insurrection,” she wrote in part of her statement.

“And if we have any hope of improving this nation, now is the time for swift and serious consequences for the failure of leadership that led to yesterday’s shame,” she added.

The message was noted by journalist Michael Shellenberger in the fourth “Twitter Files” release.

“But after the events of Jan 6, the internal and external pressure on Twitter CEO @jack grows. Former First Lady @michelleobama, tech journalist @karaswisher, @ADL, high-tech VC @ChrisSacca, and many others, publicly call on Twitter to permanently ban Trump,” he wrote.

The series of tweets suggests Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was a bystander to what would follow.

“Dorsey was on vacation in French Polynesia the week of January 4-8, 2021,” Shellenberger tweeted, saying former Twitter Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth and former Head of Legal, Policy, & Trust Vijaya Gadde were the lead executives handling the question of whether to ban Trump after the events of Jan. 6.

The series of tweets suggests Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was a bystander to what would follow.

“Dorsey was on vacation in French Polynesia the week of January 4-8, 2021,” Shellenberger tweeted, saying former Twitter Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth and former Head of Legal, Policy, & Trust Vijaya Gadde were the lead executives handling the question of whether to ban Trump after the events of Jan. 6. (Read more: The Western Journal, 12/11/2022)  (Archive)

December 14, 2022 – The National Archives wants to release hundreds of pages of emails about Hunter Biden and Burisma

The National Archives in Washington D.C. (Credit: National Archives.gov)

“The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is quietly preparing to release hundreds of pages of internal Obama White House records that could contain information about Hunter Biden’s relationship with Ukrainian energy company Burisma, Insider has learned — and the Biden Administration, which could put a stop to it by invoking executive privilege, is refusing to say whether it will allow the release to go forward.

The records, which include almost 300 full or partial emails that mention Burisma, date back to 2014 when Joe Biden was serving as vice president in the Obama Administration. According to a letter that the archives sent to the Biden White House and the Obama Foundation in November, NARA is proposing to release the records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request for emails that contain the word “Burisma.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (left), meets with Ihor Kolomoisky (right), in Kiev, Ukraine, Sept. 10, 2019. The two are known to have long-time business ties. (Credit: Reuters)

The letter doesn’t describe the emails but says that “several” of them are press inquiries after the 2014 announcement that Hunter Biden had joined the company’s board, earning as much as $83,333 a month despite having no experience in the energy sector. The letter also says NARA will withhold 22 emails, without specifying why. The Freedom of Information Act offers exemptions for draft documents and comments that are “part of the deliberative or policy-making process.” Documents that could violate someone’s privacy or expose trade secrets are also potentially exempt.

(…) But first, the Biden White House must make a politically fraught decision about whether to invoke executive privilege to keep the emails secret. Under the Presidential Records Act, Biden and Obama’s respective legal teams have 60 days to assert claims of privilege before the Burisma emails will be released. If they choose to do so, the emails will remain sealed until January 2029, unless a court orders otherwise.

Mark Zaid, a national-security lawyer who has represented many federal whistleblowers, said the case for executive privilege was weak on legal grounds for those documents that are already in third-party hands, and invocation for any document carried political risks as well. “Any selective invocation of privilege,” he said “would no doubt only serve to highlight the sensitivities.”

The Biden White House repeatedly declined to answer questions about whether it intended to fight release.

(…)The National Archives told Insider that the original FOIA request was filed by a lawyer for America First Legal, a nonprofit founded by Stephen Miller ”  (Read more: Business Insider, 12/14/2022)  (Archive) 

December 14, 2022 – Epstein Island: Newly unsealed evidence of abuse

We have newly unsealed documents – including the depositions of Ghislaine Maxwell and one of her victims – revealing new details on the extent of the abuse and victimization that took place by Jeffrey Epstein. Those filings come from Giuffre v. Maxwell, a civil case filed against Maxwell in 2015 in the New York Southern District.

Some of the broader allegations have already been made public. Sarah Ransome, who accused Epstein and Maxwell of abuse that took place during her early 20s, settled a civil lawsuit against them in 2018. Ransome has publicly described some of the abuse. And there have been reports on what transpired at Little St. James, often referred to as Epstein Island.

Unsealed photographs of Ghislaine Maxwell at Epstein Island. (Credit: public domain)

Let’s get to the new details, starting with the testimony of Ransome, available here. She actually lived one of Epstein’s apartments in 2006 with a few other girls. During that time, she worked for what she described as an “agency” which arranged paid dinners with wealthy clients: “I was paid to spend dinner with a gentleman.” Whatever happened after dinner with the client was done on her “own accord” and “after that time period had finished.”

Ransome was introduced to Epstein by a female associate of his (her name is still redacted), who described Epstein as a wealthy “philanthropist” who “really cares about people” and “really wants to help them.” She was open to meeting Epstein because she was struggling financially. Soon after meeting Epstein, Ransome was invited to travel on Epstein’s plane to Epstein Island. She was told it “was going to be a girls’ week” and they would have “so much fun”:

Q. How did the flight meeting become arranged, if you know?

A. So it was pretty a last-minute thing. phoned me up and said that Jeffrey Epstein would very much like to have me go to his island. It was going to be so much fun, it was going to be a girls’ week, there were lots of other girls going, we were going to have so much fun, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

What happened on the flight – her first flight with Epstein – must have been shocking to Ransome. She described what happened after they took off:

“The rest of the passengers in the — I think it’s towards the front of the plane where all the seats are — we all — all the guests were — fell asleep. I pretended to be asleep.

Jeffrey then went – Jeffrey went to his — was in his bed on the plane, having open sex with for everyone to see, on display.”

Ransome would eventually give massages to Epstein at the Island. She had been told that Epstein “loves women, loves getting massages” and that this “was a nice way to make extra cash.” At first, the massages were relatively normal. Then they escalated to the type of “massage” Epstein is now notorious for – much of which was done without Ransome’s consent.

She described her experiences at Epstein’s Island as being constantly surrounded by “beautiful young people” and that there “were always girls” there to visit “Jeffrey and Ghislaine.” Ransome also gave a description of the Island as having multiple buildings – a main house and then various buildings around the Island for Epstein and his guests:

“like little shelter things where him and his guests used to have sex with the girls, like beds set up for instant sexual entertainment.”

There was a “constant influx of girls” at this Island. It was a type of brothel. According to Ransome:

“It’s like, I’m sure if you go into a hooker’s brothel and see how they run their business, I mean, it’s just general conversation about who’s going to have sex with who and, you know — what do you talk about when all do you is have sex every day on rotation? I mean, what is there to talk about?”

She testified that all those girls “appeared to be teenagers.” They “looked young.” One girl in particular “looked well under 18.” This girl told Ransome that “they abused her on the island.” Another girl ran out of Epstein’s room crying and saying she was “forced to have sex with Jeffrey Epstein.” (Read more: Techno Fog/The Reactionary, 12/14/2022)  (Archive)

December 16, 2022 – Twitter Files reveal the influence of Russiagate disinformation

(…) The recently disclosed Twitter Files — a cache of internal communications from the social media giant — offer new evidence of one of the Russiagate disinformation campaign’s core functions: protecting the rule of domestic elites, particularly in the Democratic Party.

In two consecutive presidential elections, the Russian boogeyman has been invoked to stigmatize and silence reporting on the Democratic candidate. It began in 2016 when journalists who reported on the stolen DNC emails’ revelations about Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street speeches or the DNC’s bias against Bernie Sanders were blamed for Trump’s victory and deemed to be unwitting Kremlin dupes promoting “disinformation” – in reality, factual material that embarrassed the pre-ordained winner.

Four years later, that same playbook was deployed for Clinton’s successor at the top of Democratic ticket, Joe Biden. In the weeks before the November 2020 election, Twitter and Facebook censored the New York Post’s reporting about the contents Hunter Biden’s laptop on the grounds that the computer material could be “Russian disinformation.” The Post’s stories detailed how Hunter Biden traded on his family name to secure lucrative business abroad, and raised questions about Joe Biden’s denials of any involvement.

The US media responded to the suppression of the laptop story with indifference or even approval. In one notable case, Glenn Greenwald resigned from the outlet that he co-founded, The Intercept, after its editors attempted to censor his coverage of the laptop controversy. Even stories that had long been public — such as the unqualified Hunter receiving an $80,000-per-month Burisma board seat just months after his father’s administration helped overthrow Ukraine’s government – were effectively off-limits.

There was never a shred of evidence that Russia was behind the laptop story, but that was of no consequence. Dutiful media editors, reporters, and pundits took their cues from a group of more than 50 former intelligence officials, who issued a statement declaring that the Hunter Biden laptop story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

These intelligence veterans’ claim was in fact a classic Russiagate disinformation operation, as the Twitter files newly underscore.

The files, obtained by journalist Matt Taibbi, confirm that Twitter executives suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story based on the suspicion that Russia was behind it, despite their awareness that they had no evidence for that belief.

Asked to explain the rationale, Twitter’s then-Global Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth told colleagues that the “policy basis is hacked materials,” even though, he added, “the facts remain unclear.” Roth justified the fact-free censorship by invoking what he called “the SEVERE risks here and lessons of 2016.” By “lessons of 2016”, Roth was referring to the similarly evidence-free claims that Russia was behind the release of stolen DNC emails. By “SEVERE risks,” one plausible interpretation is that Roth is referring to the risk that dissemination of factual material could again, as in 2016, hurt the Democratic candidate, not to mention the career prospects of those who allow that to happen.

Joining Roth in agreement was Jim Baker, Twitter’s deputy general counsel, who advised that “it is reasonable for us to assume that they may have been [hacked] and that caution is warranted.” (emphasis added) Baker’s mere presence at Twitter, and willingness to “assume” a falsehood that could justify censorship, reveals another lesson of 2016: from media outlets to social media giants, US intelligence officials have been granted unprecedented influence over the flow of public information – including stories in which they have blatant conflicts of interest. (Read more: Aaron Maté/Substack, 12/16/2022)  (Archive)

December 16, 2022 – Twitter Files: DHS and FBI Content Removal Requests to Twitter

(Credit: Conservative Treehouse)

Independent journalist Matt Taibbi has released the sixth installment after review of more Twitter File data [SEE HERE].  Keep in mind, the research group containing Mr. Taibbi are only seeing the consequences side of the content removal process.  What specifically happened in/around the portal of information flowing into Twitter HQ is a different division.  Taibbi et al are only seeing the consequences from the requests that entered the Twitter system.

The first section of Taibbi’s analysis is the most interesting.  Having tracked the issue for several years, I would modify some of the descriptive language Taibbi presents yet agree with the overall context of his presentation.

Taibbi begins by noting, “Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.”  I would safely take that a step further, yes there is a subsidiary relationship; however, as years of government involvement continued by 2016 Twitter became the subsidiary of DHS, not vice-versa.  This dynamic within the relationship explains some of the more curious elements that Taibbi struggles to fully understand.

Notice the timing of escalation by DHS/FBI: “The FBI’s social media-focused task force, known as FTIF, created in the wake of the 2016 election, swelled to 80 agents and corresponded with Twitter to identify alleged foreign influence and election tampering of all kinds.”

As we have noted from the lead into and out of the 2016 election, the surveillance state took action specifically to protect itself from President Trump.   This activity included the NSA, FISA court, FBI, DOJ-NSD, CIA, ODNI while specifically and purposefully enmeshing the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).

Protecting Washington DC from the risk President Trump represented was a whole of government approach.  The executive and legislative branches worked together and weaponized national security claims to involve the judicial branches in the effort.  In the aftermath of the 2016 election outcome, now we see social media being pulled further into the approach.

The next three paragraphs are key in this Taibbi outline:

8. Federal intelligence and law enforcement reach into Twitter included the Department of Homeland Security, which partnered with security contractors and think tanks to pressure Twitter to moderate content.

Highlight: “security contractors,” now where have we heard that before?  Yes, the same FBI contractor access to raw/bulk NSA metadata that was discovered being extracted in the height of the 2016 GOP nomination contest.   In the aftermath of the election, and in coordination with the Twitter context, now those same security contractors are part of the surveillance system generating actionable items.

9. It’s no secret the government analyzes bulk data for all sorts of purposes, everything from tracking terror suspects to making economic forecasts.

Here’s where Taibbi comes dangerously close to realizing the inflection point created by President Obama and AG Eric Holder.  Prior to the arrival of the Obama administration the bulk data was a process of collection by the NSA (while looking outward for threats and limited in review by 4th amendment protections) and then delivery to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for transfer to DHS and FBI in order to take action on anything flagged.

When the flagged data was transferred into and out of the ODNI, the constitutional and lawful processes around the 4th amendment needed to be applied.  That’s where the FISA court comes into play and applications for surveillance, that pass through the DOJ National Security Division (DOJ-NSD), based on the intelligence data from the ODNI office, are put together.

The NSA was/is monitoring the raw data with a radar turned outward toward foreign entities.  When something is flagged, that data is then transferred to the ODNI and exits toward the Dept of Homeland Security.  The fourth amendment protection against unlawful search and seizure of private papers is supposed to apply when the data leaves ODNI.  Before the FBI can use anything, the DOJ-NSD has to get a warrant, either from a federal judge or the FISA Court depending on the issue.

This process was what Barack Obama and Eric Holder worked around as they created a quasi-constitutional surveillance system.  That’s where Taibbi’s next paragraph comes into play.  Remember, even though President Trump was in office, the system operators in the institutions were from the Obama-Holder era:

10. The #TwitterFiles show something new: agencies like the FBI and DHS regularly sending social media content to Twitter through multiple entry points, pre-flagged for moderation.

Security contractors were reviewing the public information pages, then transmitting results to DHS and FBI…. who would then use their portal connection into Twitter to make “pre-flagged” requests.   What type of requests?  Example:

This example is only on the subject of the 2020 election; however, you can see what bullet point #3 requests, “any location information associated with the accounts that Twitter would voluntarily provide.” 

Don’t get too hung up on the example, because it only references a priority of looking at the 2020 election.  Instead ask yourself the bigger question, what other priorities would be in the mind of political ideologues within DHS and FBI?   What other DHS tasks, DHS assignments and FBI operations would take place that would benefit from the networking between the government and social media?

In 2011 the DOJ was using IRS filings to conduct investigations of Americans.  That was what the entire IRS Tea Party scandal was really about.  It wasn’t the IRS wrongdoing that led to the class action settlement, it was the DOJ origination of a request for information from the IRS about the 501-c (3)(4) groups, specifically their “schedule B’ forms, that triggered the problem starting.

After the IRS issue surfaced publicly in 2012 the DOJ immediately dropped their use of the data that was contained on 21 CD-ROMS delivered by the IRS.

Aided by advances in technology, the Obama administration switched to surveillance via direct review of available metadata.  Social media platforms were enlisted as DHS partners under the auspices of ‘national security’, and suddenly there was a full-fledged surveillance state underway.

The exploitation of the FISA process and the exploitation of the social media partnership is all connected to the same surveillance effort.

Taibbi posits a question in paragraph 12, “An unanswered question: do agencies like FBI and DHS do in-house flagging work themselves, or farm it out? “You have to prove to me that inside the fucking government you can do any kind of massive data or AI search,” says one former intelligence officer.”  A question he previously answered when he talked about federal contractors.

The government doesn’t need to violate the constitution directly with unlawful searches and seizures.  The government can outsource that part to national security contractors.

What the government needs to do is collect all the data, then pay or contract someone else to search it based on the needs of the DHS, FBI, DOJ-NSD etc etc.

That domestic surveillance system is what President Obama and Eric Holder created.  That system is defended under the shield of ‘national security‘ as noted in the judicial ruling in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals (Trump Mar-a-Lago case):

The remainder of the Matt Taibbi outline showcases how various organizations could also reach out to Twitter and request content removal.  Taibbi concludes, “what most people think of as the “deep state” is really a tangled collaboration of state agencies, private contractors, and (sometimes state-funded) NGOs. The lines become so blurred as to be meaningless. 

Indeed, those lines were erased Matt.  Indeed, they were.

Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; the institutions were already weaponized by the Patriot Act.  What Obama and Holder did was take the preexisting system and retool it, so the weapons of government only targeted one side of the political continuum.

This point is where many people understandably get confused.

Elevator Speech:

(1) The Patriot Act turned the intel surveillance radar from foreign searches for terrorists to domestic searches for terrorists.

(2) Obama/Biden then redefined what is a “terrorist” to include their political opposition.

(3) The DHS, ODNI, DOJ-NSD and FISC became the four pillars of this new surveillance system. Atop these pillars is where you will find the Fourth Branch of Government.

DEEP DIVE HERE

This is the scale of corrupt political compromise on both sides of the DC dynamic that we are up against.  Preserving this system is also what removing Donald Trump is all about.  The targeting of President Trump in order to preserve the system, the system that was weaponized during the Obama administration, is what the actions of the DOJ and FBI are all about.

What would powerful people in DC do to stop the American people from finding this out?

(Conservative Treehouse, 12/16/2022)  (Archive)

December 18, 2022 – Seven former CIA directors serve on the board of the Atlantic Council and partners with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)

December 19, 2022 – Twitter Files: FBI paid millions to Twitter for its cooperation; the Intelligence community’s pressure campaign

Michael Shellenberger (Credit: public domain)

“Michael Shellenberger has just published the latest batch of what has come to be known as the Twitter Files. It’s a follow-up to Matt Taibbi’s recent Twitter Files release concerning FBI’s pressure campaign against Twitter to remove content the agency found objectionable.

Today’s release provides more details on the relationship between Twitter and the FBI, the suppression and removal of the Hunter Biden story from Twitter the FBI’s desire for Twitter to confirm a “foreign interference” narrative that didn’t exist, and how the FBI sought user location information for tweets that weren’t remotely criminal.

For a refresher, here are the highlights from one of the most recent releases from Taibbi, who has done excellent work on this continuing story:

  • The FBI requested take action on what it determined to be misinformation, which included jokes from small Twitter accounts about voting dates.
  • FBI e-mails to Twitter asking for assessment of terms of service violations and “location information” about accounts that allegedly “spread misinformation about the upcoming election.” Some of those accounts were permanently suspended.

  • How the 2016 “Russian election interference” hoax influenced the FBI’s 2020 operations into reviewing American social media posts.

Today’s thread by Shellenberger expands on what we have learned.

Some findings of note:

  • The FBI continued its requests of location and VPN IP data from Twitter users, done without a warrant and without a subpoena: “would Twitter be open to sharing which service provider(s) those VPN IP addresses resolved to?” To its credit, Twitter pushed back on this request.
  • In one case, the FBI requested user data for an account that was critical of BLM and the Democrats. Twitter responded by confirming “the account in question is domestic in origin.”
  • The US intelligence community was pushing Twitter to “share more information” and change its user privacy settings.

(…) Then we have one of the more remarkable pieces of information to be released from the Twitter: confirmation that Twitter was paid nearly $3.5 million for assisting the FBI with its processing requests.

(Read more: Techno Fog/The Reactionary, 12/19/2022)  (Archive)

More from Michael Shellenberger’s Twitter thread:

December 19, 2022 – Twitter Files: The FBI and intelligence community discredited factual information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings

Journalist Michael Shellenberger reveals “How the FBI and intelligence community discredited factual information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings both after and *before* The New York Post revealed the contents of his laptop on October 14, 2020.”

 

December 20, 2022 – Twitter Files: “At least 80” FBI agents worked with social media companies on unauthorized “Disinformation Task Force”

GOP Rep. James Comer, expected to be the House Oversight Chairman next year, told FBN’s Maria Bartiromo that the latest installment of the “Twitter Files” contains some things he plans to investigate:

(Timeline editor’s note: This is a rough interpretation of Comer’s discussion with Bartiromo.)

MARIA BARTIROMO: Elon Musk has exposed corruption in Washington, part seven of “The Twitter Files” reveals how the intelligence community pressured news and social media outlets to discredit evidence of influence-peddling from Hunter Biden on the Biden laptop, despite the FBI knowing truth for nearly a year before the New York Post story dropped.

Independent writer Michael Shellenberger reporting that throughout 2020, the FBI was repeatedly warning Twitter that stories about Hunter’s laptop was a “Russian hack and leak operation.” They knew otherwise because they had the laptop since October 2019. FBI agent Elvis Chan also emailed Twitter’s head of security a trove of documents just one day before the Post story came out.

The chairman-elect of the Huse Oversight Committee… Kentucky Congressman James Comer is here… What does this latest tranche of Twitter exposé mean to you?

REP. JAMES COMER: Well it means a lot. More evidence of wrongdoing. In the beginning I thought that there were probably two or three rogue employees who were orchestrating this cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop, but now we know that the FBI had a division of at least 80 agents. We also know that the FBI paid Twitter over three million dollars for their time, all the time they took over the past couple years, in telling them who to suppress, who to ban. You know just things that government has no role in.

The FBI was never granted the authority to create any type of disinformation task force that police the social media sites. This we know with Twitter. We’ve heard similar stories from Zuckerberg. Who knows what went on at YouTube and Google. This is an agency that is out of control, and the most frustrating thing for me right now, Maria, is the fact in this omnibus bill, there is increased funding for the FBI, plus a $1.75 billion dollars headquarters facility for the FBI. We need to halt everything with the FBI. All funding until they come forward, and explain to Congress exactly what they were doing, why they were doing it, and who gave them the authority to do it.

BARTIROMO: That is extraordinary that there is all of that money earmarked for the FBI, despite all this with wrongdoing and evidence of collusion. I don’t know why your colleagues in the Senate are going along with this omnibus bill weakening you right before you take the gavel.

COMER: Um-hmm, it does. The one thing that we have the ability to do is stop the spending. Stop the spending. We need an FBI we really do. But this FBI is out of control. It is doing things, that Congress never granted the authority to do. In no way, shape or form should the government be in the business of censoring free speech, whether liberal or conservative speech that is just something the government should not do.

But to dedicate a task force of at least 80 employees to do nothing but communicate with social media sites, telling them what soties to suppress, who to ban, is just wrong. It is a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars and a violation of the Constitution.

And to think that as we speak, the Senate is sitting here giving them more money for the next 12 months, tying our hands and our ability to get the FBI in front of the committee. One way we could get the FBI in front of the committee really quickly is say we’re not giving you a penny, until you all come down here and explain to us, what this task force was, why you told Twitter to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story when you knew darn well it was true.

The Senate is counter to everything we’re trying to do in the House from an oversight standpoint right now, especially with respect to the FBI.

BARTIROMO: That is horrible who or senators agreeing to this, Mitch McConnell? Who else?

COMER: We’ve got Richard Shelby, Rob Portman, and ironically, Maria, a lot of senators are going out of office, they are not even going to be in Congress in 10 days. This is something that should be punted until first of the year, we’ve got questions.

Look at the southern border, we are not holding anyone accountable from a budgetary standpoint for the crisis at the border, we’re not holding anyone accountable at the debacle in the NIH and the CDC, all the bad decisions they made, and all the money they waisted during Covid. And here we are with the FBI, an agency that is clearly out of control. No one, no one in Congress, even the liberals, would say the FBI has any business censoring free speech.

BARTIROMO: This is one more piece of evidence that the Senate Republicans are working against the American people. There is no other way to look at it. They continue to go with Democrat colleagues and vote for this spending, and then they complain that inflation is at 40-year highs.

…

The idea that the FBI was paying Twitter, okay? I know the FBI and DOJ pays human sources, to do their work, they paid spies during Russia collusion story, that whole made-up story that Trump colluded with Russia, they paid old spies is to entrap Trump officials. What did they do with Twitter? Why is the FBI paying Twitter? That is outrageous.

COMER: According to the latest Twitter dump, the FBI was spending so much time with Twitter executives, every two weeks having meetings that lasted for hours, telling them what stories to suppress, what looked like disinformation, who to ban from Twitter,  — I mean things that the FBI has no business doing. They reimbursed them for their time, over $3 million dollars over a two-year period. And that is just Twitter, we don’t know how much they paid Facebook, Google, YouTube, the other social media platforms.

80 employees, that’s roughly $12 million dollars in salary and benefits dedicated to policing social media sites, are you kidding me? At a time when crime is out of control, human trafficking is out of control, we have a crisis of fentanyl, we have a crisis of shoplifting, and the crime rate in these cities is higher than it has been in my adult lifetime, ans the FBI’s focused on policing social media sites? This is a gross misuse of the taxpayer dollars. (RealClearPolitics, 12/20/2022)  (Archive)

December 20, 2022 – How the FBI copied parts of the Steele dossier directly into their Carter Page FISA warrants

Crossfire Hurricane Team (Credit: Conservative Treehouse)

Paul Sperry

“The FBI relied more extensively on Christopher Steele’s debunked dossier in their Russiagate investigation than has been revealed, inserting key parts from it into their applications for warrants to spy on the 2016 Trump campaign.

Agents did this without telling the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the precise wording was plucked directly from a political rumor sheet paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign or providing judges with any independent corroboration of the explosive allegations.

But the notion that mere “snippets” of the reporting by paid Clinton subcontractor Christopher Steele showed up in FISA applications, as CNN has described it, no longer holds up to scrutiny.

A close examination of all four of the FISA warrants reveals that the FBI lifted dozens of key phrases from the dossier – as well as practically some entire sentences – and pasted them verbatim into their sworn affidavits. It did so repeatedly without citing its sources or using typical hedging language such as “allegedly” or “purportedly” to indicate that the claims were unverified. 

As a result, the FBI lent its voice of authority to many of the unsourced – and now debunked – accusations in the dossier. 

For example, it avowed under oath in all four warrant applications that “the FBI has learned” that onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had secretly met with sanctioned Kremlin officials in Moscow. But those allegations came from Steele’s D.C.-based collector Igor Danchenko, who admitted to the FBI in a January 2017 interview his input was just “hearsay” gathered from “conversation with friends over beer.”

It is not clear whether the bureau decided to pay Steele in connection with the dossier so that it could represent the material as originating from one of its own confidential sources. At one point it reportedly offered him $1 million if he could verify key claims (he could not).

Meanwhile, the FBI repeatedly portrayed improbable third-hand rumors as sound “intelligence,” despite taking them directly from paid political opposition research operatives. Suggesting independent verification, the bureau repeatedly assured the FISA court it “assesses” the truth of damning claims.  

In some cases, the FBI mixed partial information from one dossier report with partial information from another report to draw broader conclusions. It then used these as a foundation to claim evidence of a grand election “conspiracy” between the Trump campaign and Russia, with Page acting as an “intermediary.” Such a conspiracy was what counterintelligence agents needed to convince the FISA court that their main target Page was a Kremlin agent who posed a national security threat, and that deploying the government’s most intrusive investigative method – electronic surveillance – was necessary to investigate him.

In short, the FBI fabricated conclusions from fabrications and turned them into sworn representations before the powerful Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. 

Veteran FBI investigators who have worked counterintelligence cases and sworn out wiretap warrants say the agents who ran the Russiagate investigation, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane, violated the fundamental principle requiring them to independently verify evidence they present to the court.
Cl
“Their actions – lying and misrepresentations on warrants and affidavits – are antithetical to every instruction at FBI training at Quantico and in the field,” said 27-year FBI veteran Michael Biasello. “Any FBI Academy trainee and agent in the field is aware that search warrants, affidavits and any accompanying documents and information contained therein requiring federal judicial approval is to be vetted and verified to create a pristine document. Their accuracy is vital.” 

The FBI declined comment.

The bureau’s reliance on the dossier – a series of 17 reports compiled by Steele for Fusion GPS, the Washington-based opposition research firm employed the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee – has been brought into sharp relief by the work of Special Counsel John Durham.

His team investigated for possible criminal misconduct the Russiagate probe that hobbled the Trump presidency. It zeroed in on the FBI’s handling of the dossier both before and after the agency began using it to gain FISA court approval to wiretap Page in 2016 and 2017. Investigators questioned several FBI witnesses about their interactions with Steele and Danchenko, some of whom Durham said were not forthcoming about their involvement and obtained related documents. Danchenko, who provided an estimated 80% of the dossier’s content, was indicted last year for lying about the sources of his information, though he was acquitted in October by a D.C.-area jury.

Like CNN, the New York Times has tried to minimize the agency’s reliance on the dossier. In a recent article on Durham’s inquiry, the Times maintained that the FBI only used “some” claims from the dossier in applying for court permission to wiretap Page.

In fact, the FBI used several claims – and those claims happened to constitute the most critical “evidence” in the wiretap applications. Even former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe has admitted that if not for the Steele dossier, no surveillance warrant would have been sought for Page.

All told, the FBI used four dossier reports – Report 80, Report 94, Report 95 and Report 102 – in all four of its FISA wiretap warrants targeting Page in 2016 and 2017. And three of the reports were based on a fictitious source. (Read more: RealClearWire, 12/20/2022)  (Archive)

December 20, 2022 -Biden aides find another batch of classified documents at separate location

“Aides to President Joe Biden have discovered at least one additional batch of classified documents in a location separate from the Washington office he used after leaving the Obama administration, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Since November, after the discovery of documents with classified markings in his former office, Biden aides have been searching for any additional classified materials that might be in other locations he used, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details about the ongoing inquiry.

Joe Biden (Credit: Nathan Howard/Getty)

The White House did not reply to a request for comment. The Justice Department had no comment.

The initial discovery of classified documents in an office used by Biden after his vice presidency was first reported on Monday by CBS News.

The classification level, number and precise location of the additional documents was not immediately clear. It also was not immediately clear when the additional documents were discovered and if the search for any other classified materials Biden may have from the Obama administration is complete.

Biden aides have been sifting through documents stored at locations beyond his former Washington office to determine if there are any other classified documents that need to be turned over to the National Archives and reviewed by the Justice Department, the person familiar with the matter said.” (Read more: NBC News, 1/11/2023)  (Archive)

“The initial statement issued by White House attorney Richard Sauber on Monday to address the CBS News report on classified documents being discovered at the Penn Biden Center on November 2, 2022, failed to disclose that additional classified documents were found at Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home on December 20 by Biden’s personal attorneys. It was not until Thursday morning that Sauber announced that a second set of classified documents were found in Biden’s garage and was confirmed by Biden in a contentious colloquy with Fox News reporter Peter Doocy.”

(Read more: The Gateway Pundit, 1/12/2023) (Archive)

Merrick Garland Appoints Robert Hur as Special Counsel to Investigate Joe Biden’s Handling of Classified Documents 1/12/2023

December 21, 2022 – Elvis Chan denies claim he warned Twitter security chief about Biden laptop being a Russian leak

Elvis Chan (l) and Yoel Roth (Credit: SMG/Twitter)

“Controversial FBI agent Elvis Chan has denied he warned Twitter‘s then-security chief about a supposed Russian operation to hack and leak false information on Hunter Biden.

Yoel Roth had claimed in a sworn declaration to the Federal Election Committee in December 2020 that he felt compelled to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story and label it as coming from ‘hacked materials’ based on information FBI agents had given him at weekly meetings.

But Chan, a supervisory special agent for the Bureau, insisted in a deposition in November that none of the agents specifically mentioned the Hunter Biden story as one of the possible ‘hack-and-leak’ operations.

He testified as part of a lawsuit against the Biden administration, accusing the now president of organizing meetings in San Francisco for as many as seven DC-based FBI agents in the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election.

Those FBI agents would then meet with Big Tech officials to remove ‘disfavored speakers, viewpoints and content on social media platforms… under the guise of combating misinformation,’ the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri claim.

In his declaration, Roth claimed: ‘I was told… that the intelligence community expected that individuals associated with political campaigns would be subject to hacking attacks and that material obtained through those hacking attacks would likely be disseminated over social media platforms, including Twitter.

‘I also learned in these meetings that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden,’ he added, as Twitter tried to defend itself against a complaint by the Tea Party Patriots Foundation that its censorship was an ‘in-kind’ campaign contribution to then-candidate Joe Biden.

Under questioning by Solicitor General John Sauer late last month, Chan said he ‘would interpret’ what Roth said in his sworn testimony ‘differently.’

He insisted he had never discussed Hunter Biden’s laptop as being subject to a ‘hack-and-leak operation’ at weekly meetings with content moderation officials at Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo!, Reddit and even LinkedIn.

‘In my estimation, we never discussed Hunter Biden specifically with Twitter,’ he said. ‘And so the way I read that is that there are hack-and-leak operations, and then at the time, I believe he flagged one of the potential current events that were happening ahead of the elections.’

Chan then explained that because he does not actually remember discussing the Hunter Biden laptop, ‘we didn’t discuss it.

‘So this would have been something that he would have just thought of as hot-button issue on his own.’

Chan also revealed in his testimony that the FBI now plans to hold more meetings with Big Tech officials ahead of the 2024 presidential election — and this time will include representatives from Apple and the Wikimedia Foundation.

‘They were added because they are a cloud infrastructure company,’ he said of adding Apple to the discussions.

‘And we believe the tactical information, specifically indicators that we shared with them related to foreign-state-sponsored actors, might pop-up on any screening they do on iCloud.’

Chan also spoke of his close relations with the so-called ‘FBI lovers’ who had tried to discredit then-President Trump with claims that his administration had close ties to the Kremlin.

He admitted he knew Peter Strzok, a former deputy assistant director of counterintelligence for the Bureau, as well as Lisa Page, an FBI attorney.” (Read more: The Daily Mail, 12/21/2022)  (Archive)

December 21, 2022 – House GOP locates emails, texts showing Pelosi office directly involved in failed Jan. 6 security

Nancy Pelosi (Credit: Ryan Melgar/The Atlantic)

“House Republicans gathered a trove of text and email messages showing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office was directly involved in the creation and editing of the Capitol security plan that failed during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot and that security officials later declared they had been “denied again and again” the resources needed to protect one of the nation’s most important homes of democracy.

The internal communications were made public Wednesday in a report compiled by Republican Reps. Rodney Davis, Jim Banks, Troy Nehls, Jim Jordan and Kelly Armstrong that encompasses the results of months of investigation they did of evidence that had been ignored by the Democrat-led Jan. 6 committee. The lawmakers were authorized by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to do their own probe.

Pelosi’s chief of staff Terri McCullough and another aide assigned to Pelosi’s staff, Jamie Fleet (pictured), had regular contact with police and the sergeant at arms over the security planning for Jan. 6 starting in early December 2020. (Credit: public domain)

The report concludes the Capitol was left vulnerable on Jan. 6 as a result of failures by the Democratic leadership in the House and law enforcement leaders in the Capitol Police who allowed concerns about the “optics” of having armed officers and National Guardsmen visible to the public to override the need for enhanced security.

“Leadership and law enforcement failures within the U.S. Capitol left the complex vulnerable on January 6, 2021. The Democrat-led investigation in the House of Representatives, however, has disregarded those institutional failings that exposed the Capitol to violence that day,” it concluded.

“Leadership and law enforcement failures within the U.S. Capitol left the complex vulnerable on January 6, 2021. The Democrat-led investigation in the House of Representatives, however, has disregarded those institutional failings that exposed the Capitol to violence that day,” it concluded.

It also corroborated prior reporting by Just the News that Capitol Police began receiving specific warnings in mid-December that there could be significant violence planned against the Capitol and lawmakers by protesters planning to attend the certification of the 2020 election results.

“Prior to that day, the U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) had obtained sufficient information from an array of channels to anticipate and prepare for the violence that occurred,” the report noted.

You can read the full report here:

 FINAL Report of Investigation.pdf

December 26, 2022 – Former FBI agent offers perspective on the DOJ/FBI efforts to derail Nunes investigation into Russiagate hoaxes

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, along with Rep. Peter King and Rep. Ron DeSantis, speaks on Capitol Hill, October 24, 2017. (Credit: Susan Walsh/AP)

“My post yesterday regarding the DoJ/FBI investigation of two of Devin Nunes’ top lawyers sparked a response from a former FBI agent—as sometimes happens here. You’ll recall that the investigation in question was a full criminal investigation that featured the use of grand jury subpoenas to obtain personal information regarding the two staffers (including Kash Patel) who were involved in Nunes’ investigation of Russia Hoax abuses—especially the fraudulent FISA applications that were submitted against Carter Page. Because of various procedural irregularities it’s apparent—failure to notify Nunes—there seems little doubt that the purpose of the investigations was to obtain personal information that could be used to pressure Nunes into backing off from his investigation. In fact, DAG Rod Rosenstein and Chris Wray had threatened to launch exactly such investigations in a meeting with Nunes and Kash Patel—unless Nunes backed off.

Needless to say, investigations launched for such a purpose are totally lacking in predication—they lack a legitimate government legal purpose, since conducting legislative oversight investigations is not a violation of federal law (!). I harp on this matter of predication because, to me—and I think objectively, the abuse of the investigative/prosecutorial process for political purposes is perhaps the ultimate and most serious form of corruption. It undermines the justice system and the very concept of rule of law rather than rule of men—the basis of our constitutional order. As I noted at that time, it is clear that such considerations play no part at all in the decisions of men like Rosenstein and Wray—and far too many more. These are real and serious violations of the law, which go unpunished.

Here is the email (slightly edited to preserve anonymity) that I received last night. Readers will readily imagine that the sentiments expressed are widely held among former and active FBI personnel. Bear in mind that, while these abuses are receiving widespread publicity, most FBI agents are not involved and are ashamed to be associated with the activities that are being exposed.

     Having been required to read and comprehend the Domestic Investigative Operations Guide (“DIOG”) when it came out and being a Bureau legal advisor which required that I speak DIOG fluently, I think we are collectively making a mistake to think that anyone at the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Bureau cares one whit about predication.  No DOJ or Bureau employee has ever punished for violating the DIOG or federal criminal statutes.  As a result, when the DOJ and Bureau can claim the mantle of “national security” and effectively and easily thwart any attempts at Congressional oversight, what does it matter if the investigation of Nunes and his staffers was properly predicated?  I am asking rhetorically.  I understand that the DOJ and Bureau violated the DIOG/law/Constitutional requirements and should be held accountable.  But when no one can hold the DOJ or Bureau to account for such violations, why even bother with the charade of seeking predication?  I read the Electronic Communication (“EC”; after it was publicly released) that opened the investigation into general Flynn.  It was a complete joke.  All it alleged was that Flynn met with some Russians and did some overseas travel.   There was nothing within the four corners of that document that would have been the proper basis of any predication of the investigation (as a side note, had any agent brought such a piece of garbage to me to review as a legal advisor, I would have laughed them out of my office and then had a serious discussion with said agent’s supervisor about that agent’s fitness for duty, but I digress).  Yet the investigation proceeded, Flynn was indicted, arrested and prosecuted with no proper predication.  What is/was to stop the DOJ and Bureau from just opening an investigation on Nunes or anyone else for that matter and ignoring the need to abide by “the rules”?  I respectfully submit, not a damn thing.

Every crime victim I ever interviewed all shared the same sentiment:  “I didn’t think it (crime) could happen to me.”  The point is that it appears that many of the machinations by the DOJ and Bureau are completely lawless with no basis in legally comprehensible evidence of criminal violations. I think the sooner we all collectively realize “That it can happen here/to us” the better we will be able to address this issue.  Please don’t take this as a criticism of you and your work, it’s just an observation made by a retired agent.

All of which brings me to a serious question:  What concrete things can we do to:  A) Address the current issues facing our Republic (DOJ/Bureau overreach, profligate spending, creeping government sponsored surveillance state, potential nuclear war, and…?)  and B)How do we fix our society at a very basic level to create wise citizens who can keep our Republic in good order?  I am pretty much done reading the latest “outrage” in the conservative press.  I understand that things are a mess.  My overarching question to complainers/commentators/politicians is: “What are you going to do about it?”  I have steadily volunteered to assist the Republican party over the last two years to little or no avail.  I am redirecting my efforts and concentrating on assisting local legislators address local issues where I may have some small amount of control.

Anyway, deep thoughts on a rainy, cold afternoon.  I am going to throw another log on the fire.  Thanks for listening to my rant.  I fervently wish that you and yours have a peaceful, prosperous and boring New Year!

My response:

I’m totally on board with you. I would simply add–and I’m not making excuses for the Bureau–that too few people understand how much of this is driven by DoJ. Especially given that so many of the HQ legal people are joined at the hip with DoJ, either mentally from prior education or because they have prior work experience there. I refuse to believe that DoJ wasn’t in on the Twitter (and other) censorship. The Bureau gets the headlines, the talk of a new Church Commission, but DoJ is arguably the biggest threat to the nation.

And the response to my response:

As to the DoJ, there is absolutely no way any of this “stuff” happened without their full knowledge and support.

The long and the short of it is that the country has been hijacked by a ruling class that is working for its own benefit. (Read more: Mark Wauck/Substack, 12/29/2022)(Archive) (Original article: The Epoch Times, 12/27/2202)  (Archive)

December 28, 2022 – Twitter Files: The DHS-backed censorship consortium censored millions of social media posts on elections, Covid-19 and Biden laptop

December 31, 2022 – Whitney Webb exposes the deep corruption and cover up at the heart of the western power structure

Journalist Whitney Webb sits down with Redacted’s Clayton Morris for a dense conversation about her bombshell new book on Jeffrey Epstein’s deep connections to the world’s biggest power players.