“When considering who were the FBI contractors, with special program access to the NSA database, conducting unauthorized searches and extracting results… there’s a specific type of contractor described by FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer.  One who was able to work around the security protocols: [Page 21] “systems …. that do not interface with NSA’s query audit system“.

In 2018 congressman Jim Jordan made mention of an issue where James Comey had a special employee on assignment ‘off-the-books’.  People started asking questions and Fox News Catherine Herridge detailed how Daniel Richman held special access privileges to the FBI, as an outcome of former FBI Director James Comey authorizing his friend as a “Special Government Employee” or SGE.

(VIA FOX) […] The professor, Daniel Richman, confirmed the special status in response to an inquiry from Fox News, while referring other questions, including on the scope of his work, to the FBI.

“I did indeed have SGE status with the Bureau (for no pay),” Richman wrote in an email.

Richman emerged last year as the former FBI director’s contact for leaking memos documenting his private discussions with President Trump – memos that are now the subject of an inspector general review over the presence of classified material. Sources familiar with Richman’s status at the FBI told Fox News that he was assigned to “special projects” by Comey, and had a security clearance as well as badge access to the building. Richman’s status was the subject of a Memorandum of Understanding. (read more)

Wait, let’s look at something here.

From the article the benefits included: “Sources familiar with Richman’s status at the FBI told Fox News that he was assigned to “special projects” by Comey, and had a security clearance as well as badge access to the building. Richman’s status was the subject of a Memorandum of Understanding.”

A few paragraphs later, this: “Richman’s portfolio included the use of encrypted communications by terror suspects.”

Oh my. Well, well, well… You see what’s being described here. There’s only one way to gain access to “encrypted communications” and that means having access to the FBI and NSA database.

Accepting he obviously had such access…. what would be the probability that Daniel Richman was one of these?

Daniel Richman

(Read more: Conservative Treehouse, 4/23/2019)

“An investment firm directed by President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden was a leading financial backer of a pandemic tracking and response firm that collaborated on identifying and isolating deadly pathogens in Ukrainian laboratories, receiving funds from the Obama administration’s Department of Defense in the process, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.

Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP) – a subsidiary of the Hunter Biden and Christopher Heinz-founded Rosemont Capital – counted both Biden and Heinz as managing directors. Heinz is the stepson of former U.S. Secretary of State and current Climate czar John Kerry.

Rob Walker (Credit: public domain)

Amongst the companies listed on archived versions of the RSTP’s portfolio is Metabiota – an ostensibly San Francisco-based company that purports to detect, track, and analyze emerging infectious diseases.

Financial reports reveal that RSTP led the company’s first round of funding in 2015, which amounted to $30 million. Former managing director and co-founder of RSTP Neil Callahan – a name that also appears many times on Hunter Biden’s hard drive – sits on Metabiota’s Board of Advisors alongside former Clinton official Rob Walker who discussed, in another unearthed Hunter Biden hard drive e-mail, reaching out to the Obama Department of Defense with regard to Metabiota.

In July 2021, The National Pulse exclusively revealed the connection between Metabiota, Hunter Biden, and the pandemic-linked EcoHealth Alliance which worked closely with Anthony Fauci’s National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and the notorious Wuhan laboratory.

Today, we can exclusively reveal an official connection between the Biden-linked pandemic firm and biological laboratories based in Ukraine. In early March we revealed how these labs were handling “especially dangerous pathogens” through programs funded by the U.S. government. The potential for such entities to fall into the hands of invading Russian forces has come under hotly disputed scrutiny in recent weeks.

A feature in the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine’s (STCU) 2016 Annual Report recounts a “Trilateral Meeting with Ukraine, Poland, and the United States Regional Collaboration on Biological Security, Safety, and Surveillance.”

The Trilateral meeting with Ukraine, Poland and the United States Regional Collaboration on Biological Security, Safety and Surveillance, October 3, 2016. (Credit: Science and Technology Center in Ukraine)

The article describes in particular an October 2016 meeting involving U.S. military officials and their Ukrainian counterparts discussing “cooperation in surveillance and prevention of especially dangerous infectious diseases, including zoonotic diseases in Ukraine and neighboring countries.”

” (Read more: The National Pulse, 3/24/2022) (Archive)

Hillary Clinton doled out favors to Swedish Telecom giant Ericsson after it paid Bill Clinton $750,000 to give a speech in 2011. (Credit: Casper Hedberg, Bloomberg/Getty Images)

Bill Clinton’s foundation set up a fundraising arm in Sweden that collected $26 million in donations at the same time that country was lobbying Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department to forgo sanctions that threatened its thriving business with Iran, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Times.

The Swedish entity called the William J. Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse, was never disclosed to or cleared by State Department ethics officials, even though one of its largest sources of donations was a Swedish government-sanctioned lottery.

As the money flowed to the foundation from Sweden, Mrs. Clinton’s team in Washington declined to blacklist any Swedish firms despite warnings from career officials at the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm that Sweden was growing its economic ties with Iran and potentially undercutting Western efforts to end Tehran’s rogue nuclear program, diplomatic cables show.

“Sweden does not support implementing tighter financial sanctions on Iran” and believes “more stringent financial standards could hurt Swedish exports,” one such cable from 2009 alerted Mrs. Clinton’s office in Washington.

Separately, U.S. intelligence was reporting that Sweden’s second-largest employer, telecommunications giant Ericsson AB, was pitching cellphone tracking technology to Iran that could be used by the country’s security services, officials told The Times.

By the time Mrs. Clinton left office in 2013, the Clinton Foundation Insamlingsstiftelse had collected millions of dollars inside Sweden for his global charitable efforts and Mr. Clinton personally pocketed a record $750,000 speech fee from Ericsson, one of the firms at the center of the sanctions debate.

Mr. Clinton’s Swedish fundraising shell escaped public notice, both because its incorporation papers were filed in Stockholm — some 4,200 miles from America’s shores — and the identities of its donors were lumped by Mr. Clinton’s team into the disclosure reports of his U.S.-based charity, blurring the lines between what were two separate organizations incorporated under two different countries’ laws.

The foundation told The Times through a spokesman that the Swedish entity was set up primarily to collect donations from popular lotteries in that country, that the money went to charitable causes like fighting climate change, AIDS in Africa and cholera in Haiti, and that all of the Swedish donors were accounted for on the rolls publicly released by the U.S. charity.

The foundation, however, declined repeated requests to identify the names of the specific donors that passed through the Swedish arm. (Read more: The Washington Times, 4/05/2015)  (Archive)

(…) The material, none of which was encrypted or protected by anything as basic as two-factor authentication, includes:

• Joe Biden’s personal mobile number and three private email addresses as well as the names of his Secret Service agents;
  Mobile numbers for former President Bill Clinton, his wife Hillary and almost every member of former President Barack Obama’s cabinet;
• A contact database of 1,500 people including actress Gwyneth Paltrow, Coldplay singer Chris Martin, former Presidential candidate John Kerry and ex-FBI boss Louis Freeh;
• Personal documents including Hunter’s passport, driver’s licence, social security card, credit cards and bank statements;
• Details of Hunter’s drug and sex problems, including $21,000 spent on one ‘live cam’ porn website and ‘selfies’ of him engaging in sex acts and smoking crack cocaine;

A contact database of 1,500 people includes the numbers of Bill and Hillary Clinton, actress Gwyneth Paltrow, her ex-husband Coldplay singer Chris Martin, former Presidential candidate John Kerry and ex-FBI boss Louis Freeh .

(The Daily Mail, 11/01/2020)  (Archive)

General Flynn tweets the following question about the author of the email, Kathy Chung:

Twitter researcher, @15poundstogo responds (and I’m not sure why tweets won’t open up on Word Press right now, lol):

Chung was Joe Biden’s assistant. pic.twitter.com/1lPKZdlyEo

— Brennan’sOrangeJumpsuit (@15poundstogo) November 1, 2020

Mark Wauck at meaninginhistory.blogspot adds more information on Kathy Chung:

“It’s an interesting question, and one that’s easily answered. Kathy Chung (aka Kathy Sang-Ok Chung, Kathy S. Geraghty) was an assistant to then Vice President Joe Biden–that is, in 2015.

Yes, it’s easy to imagine that a foreign intelligence service would be interested in having all those cell phone numbers–but what use would Hunter Biden have for them?

GNEWS thinks it has the answer, and in fact their answer seems to be what Michael Flynn is hinting at: Hunter Biden Sold the Clintons’ Phone Numbers to the CCP. Of course, there would be any number of ways to disguise what the payment was actually for. GNEWS doesn’t go in for nuance:

The CCP obtained the personal cell phone numbers available only to the Secret Service because the whereabouts of these members and their families were being protected by the United States Secret Service [USSS]. A traitor among them [USSS] had apparently supplied the list directly or indirectly to Kathy S. Chuang, who was hired by Rosemont Seneca, of which Hunter Biden was a co-founder. The CCP would secretly monitor and record the phone conversations of these officials who worked at the government at the highest level, in order to find their weakness and their dirty dealings, to blackmail them, and to own them.

It’s an interesting narrative. One that hangs together pretty well. A good working hypothesis. (meaninginhistory, 11/01/2020)

Marc Holtzman, former CEO, JSC Kazkommertsbank (Credit: public domain)

Hunter Biden hosted a breakfast meeting between his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, his then-business partner Devon Archer, a prospective international business client — in the vice president’s mansion in Washington, D.C., in 2015, according to a report.

Just the News reported Thursday the prospective business client was international banker Marc Holtzman, who Hunter Biden and Devon Archer were courting for business in Kazakhstan. Holtzman in turn was advocating for former Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov — who is currently imprisoned for treason — to become the next United Nations Secretary General, according to the report.

The meeting was recently disclosed by Archer in congressional testimony, the report said.

Archer’s testimony contradicts President Joe Biden, who has repeatedly denied ever speaking to his son about his business dealings.

Although it is not the first time the then-vice president had met with his son and his son’s business partners, this meeting occurred in the then-vice president’s mansion at the Naval Observatory, and could be of interest to House investigators as they begin their impeachment inquiry that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced on Tuesday.

A view of the security around the Vice President’s residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, Jan. 17, 2021. (Credit: Susan Walsh/AP)

The meeting was reportedly not registered in official entry logs released by the Obama administration.

According to a transcript of Archer’s testimony, Hunter Biden and Archer had hoped that Holtzman, who was then the top official at Kazakhstan’s largest bank, could help deliver an energy deal for their Burisma client in Ukraine with Kazakhstan, which he and Hunter Biden called the “Burisma Eurasia” deal.

“Joe Biden was in a position to influence both,” Just the News reported. (Read more: 9/14/2023)  (Archive)

(Timeline editor’s note: We have given this timeline entry an estimated date in 2015.)

Kane Gamble (Credit: The Telegraph)

“A 15-year-old gained access to plans for intelligence operations in Afghanistan and Iran by pretending to be the head of the CIA to gain access to his computers, a court has heard.

From the bedroom of the Leicestershire home he shared with his mother, Kane Gamble used “social engineering” – where a person builds up a picture of information and uses it manipulate others into handing over more – to access the personal and work accounts of some of America’s most powerful spy chiefs.

The teenager persuaded call handlers at an internet giant that he was John Brennan, the then director of the CIA, to gain access to his computers and an FBI helpdesk that he was Mark Giuliano, then the agency’s Deputy Director, to re-gain access to an intelligence database.

He also targeted the US Secretary of Homeland Security and Barack Obama’s Director of National Intelligence from his semi-detached council house in Coalville.

Gamble taunted his victims online, released personal information, bombarded them with calls and messages, downloaded pornography onto their computers and took control of their iPads and TV screens, a court heard.

(…) Gamble, who has pleaded guilty to ten offences under the computer misuse act, first targeted Mr. Brennan and gained access to his Verizon internet account by pretending first to be an employee of the company and then Mr. Brennan himself, building up an increasingly detailed picture.

At first he was denied access to his computers as he could not name Mr. Brennan’s first pet, but on later calls, the handler changed the pin and security questions.

He used similar methods to access Mr. Brennan’s AOL account and eventually Gamble was able to access his emails, contacts, his iCloud storage account, and his wife’s iPad remotely.

Mr. Lloyd-Jones QC said: “He accessed some extremely sensitive accounts referring to, among other things, military operations and intelligence operations in Afghanistan and Iran.” (Read more: The Telegraph, 1/19/2018)  (Archive)

“Officials of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are in flight from evidence of negligence, incompetence, and corruption in their management of billions of dollars in loans for Ukraine.

Nikolai Gueorguiev, head of the Ukraine team at IMF headquarters in Washington, DC, and Jerome Vacher, the IMF representative in Kiev, refuse to respond to questions on their role in the offshore diversion of IMF loan money through Privatbank and Credit Dnepr Bank, banks owned by Ukrainian oligarchs Igor Kolomoisky and Victor Pinchuk. The Fund’s Managing Director Christine Lagarde (lead image, front) and her spokesman, Gerry Rice (rear), are covering up evidence of conflicts of interest and multiple violations of the IMF Staff Code of Conduct which have been occurring in the Ukraine loan programme. Simonetta Nardin, head of the Fund’s media relations, refuses to explain her apparent violations of the Code, or respond to evidence that she fabricated elements of her career resume.

On Tuesday a spokesman at the US Department of Justice in Washington confirmed that an investigation is under way of the role played by US clearing banks in the movement of IMF funds through the Privatbank group and companies connected with Kolomoisky. Speaking for the Asset Forefeiture and Money Laundering Section, Peter Carr declined to give more details.

In recent indictments presented to US courts, Justice Department officials have defined the crime of money laundering as the transmission or transfer of money through “a place in the United States to or through a place outside the United States” with the “intent to promote the carrying on of specified unlawful activity”; with knowledge that the transfer of funds represents “the proceeds of some unlawful activity”; and with the intention to “conceal or disguise the nature, the location, the source, the ownership, or the control of the proceeds of unspecified unlawful activity”.

The role of US system banks, such as Citibank, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase, in clearing US dollar transactions has been the basis of selective Justice Department prosecutions of Russian and pro-Russian Ukrainian companies and individuals since the toppling of President Victor Yanukovich in Kiev in February 2014. In contrast, Ukrainian allies of the US in that operation, including Yulia Tymoshenko (below, left), Kolomoisky (centre), and Pinchuk (right), have not been pursued on court evidence of their involvement in corruption and money-laundering.

Washington’s selectivity and political favouritism was condemned by an Austrian court in May when a US extradition request for Dmitry Firtash on corruption charges was rejected. Justice Department lawyers are now attempting a retrial of their allegations in an appeals court in Vienna.

For the Justice Department to acknowledge this week that it is investigating Kolomoisky is unusual. Kolomoisky himself was last recorded as visiting the US in April; follow that story here. He is based in Geneva, where a Swiss Government investigation of his qualification for renewal of a residency permit continues without end.

For the US to acknowledge opening an investigation of IMF lending to Ukraine is unprecedented. The IMF resumed its loan disbursements to Ukraine in March. This was after a hiatus of six months from October of 2014 when the Stand-By Arrangement (SBA) agreed the previous April was suspended as Fund officials attempted to convince the board that the Kiev government was capable of repaying its debts and meeting its loan conditions. When the Fund launched the SBA on April 30, 2014, it had claimed: “A strong and comprehensive structural reform package is critical to reduce corruption…to build capacity to more effectively conduct enforcement of anti-money laundering and anti-corruption legislation.”

The IMF reports that in 2014 it gave $2.2 billion to the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) before the suspension. Another $5.4 billion in IMF cash was paid to Kiev for what is called “budget support”. That also included warfighting in eastern Ukraine.

When the IMF board agreed to restart lending with a new arrangement called the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), the American deputy managing director of the Fund, David Lipton, claimed: “Restoring a sound banking system is key for economic recovery. To this end, the strategy to strengthen banks through recapitalization, reduction of related-party lending, and resolution of impaired assets should be implemented decisively.” Using the future tense Lipton (below, left) was acknowledging that next to nothing had been done to reform the Ukrainian banks in fifteen months.

Gueorguiev (right), an ex-official of the Bulgarian government, has claimed he is in charge of the independent auditing and supervision of the Ukrainian banks; for the record of his admissions in June 2014, click. Since then Gueorguiev refuses to answer questions.

In the new staff report for which he and Jerome Vacher, the IMF resident representative in Kiev, are responsible, issued a month ago, they admitted the condition of the Ukrainian banks is parlous. “Outstanding NBU loans are still elevated for a number of domestic banks. At end-June, the aggregate liquidity ratio among the 35 largest banks was 15.2 percent, although seven of these domestic privately-owned banks had liquidity ratios below 5 percent.” Privat and Credit Dnepr, the Kolomoisky and Pinchuk pocket banks, aren’t identified.

(…) The new staff report claims it has been decided to continue making “provision related loans in full and transfer them into a specialized unit inside the bank in case it is needed to ensure medium-term financial viability of any resolved SIB. [And] inject public funds in the SIBs only after shareholders have been completely diluted and non-deposit unsecured creditors are bailed in.” This looks like the IMF has decided to oust Kolomoisky from control of Privatbank. It may be advance warning for him to empty the bank’s pockets into his own before the dilution and other conditions take effect. That would make Gueorguiev and his IMF colleagues complicit in the money laundering schemes the Justice Department is investigating – if evidence turns up that they knew, or ought to have known, of transfer schemes intended to defraud the bank, its collateral shareholder NBU and lender IMF, by hiding the cash offshore under Kolomoisky’s personal control.

Jerome Vacher

(…) Vacher (right), the Fund’s resident representative in Kiev, may be of greater interest to US investigators because he appears to have been exchanging valuable favours with Pinchuk. Questioned about his trip to Venice in May to attend a Pinchuk art show and political rally, Vacher is admitting through the Fund’s press office that he wasn’t on official duty at the time. But did he stay on board Pinchuk’s motor yacht Oneness, which port logs show to have been in Venice between May 4 and May 8? Vacher and his superiors in Washington are withholding their answer. For more details of Vacher’s relationship with Pinchuk, read this. For the impact of the IMF loan programme on Credit Dnepr Bank, click here.

Reporting to Managing Director Lagarde as chief spokesmen for the Fund’s Ukraine operations are Rice, a British national, and Simonetta Nardin, an Italian. She claims to have been a journalist in Italy before joining the IMF in 1997. In a forum sponsored by the US Government’s National Endowment for Democracy, the Czech Foreign Ministry, the European Commission, and a Taiwan government office in Prague, she also claimed her role is “to make the IMF responsible and accountable for what it does.” (Read more: John Helmer, 9/03/2015)    (Archive)

(Republished in part, with permission)