The Great Lab Leak Cover-Up By the U.S. Government
BY WILL JONES | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 30, 2022
Thomas Fazi, who has a book on The Covid Consensus coming out shortly with Toby Green, has written an excellent summary in UnHerd of the evidence of a cover-up of the possible lab origin of SARS-CoV-2 by those behind the kind of research that would have produced it.
Much of the work on SARS-like CoVs performed in Wuhan was part of an active and highly collaborative U.S.-China scientific research programme funded by the U.S. Government – primarily through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), directed by Anthony Fauci, which is part of the NIH – and coordinated by the U.S.-based non-governmental organisation EcoHealth Alliance (EHA). The group’s research work went beyond the simple analysis of existing coronaviruses, and actually involved the engineering of ‘chimeric’ bat coronaviruses, some of which proved to be potentially more infectious to humans – a highly risky technique known as gain-of-function.
In 2018, EcoHealth and the WIV (in collaboration with other institutions) sent a grant proposal to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which included a plan to insert furin cleavage sites into existing bat coronaviruses – spots in the surface protein of a virus that can boost its entry into human cells. The DARPA proposal was rejected – and yet the presence of a furin cleavage site is precisely what sets SARS-CoV-2 apart from all known SARS-like coronaviruses. Did the researchers carry out the research anyway, possibly using other sources of funding? Nobel Prize-winning virologist David Baltimore stated that he considered this to be “the smoking gun for the origin of the virus”.
In light of all this, it’s hardly surprising that in the early days of the pandemic, at the highest levels of the U.S. establishment, the question of whether the virus might have been engineered at the WIV, possibly through research part-funded by the U.S. Government, was taken very seriously. As a result of an FoIA request, we know that on February 1st 2020, Anthony Fauci convened a “totally confidential” conference call with at least a dozen high-level experts from around the world, many of whom privately admitted that there was a very high probability that the virus had been artificially engineered and had then “escaped” from the Wuhan lab.
Yet not only did the NIH fail to disclose this to the public or to Congress, but the emails released under the FoIA suggest that it took an early and active role in promoting the ‘zoonotic hypothesis’ and the rejection of the laboratory-associated hypothesis. Indeed, within days of the February 1st call, a group of virologists, including some who were on it and had endorsed the ‘artificial origin’ theory, prepared the first draft of a hugely influential paper on The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 – subsequently published in Nature – that argued for the exact opposite.
Moreover, the NIH has resisted the release of important evidence, such as the grant proposals and project reports of EHA, and has continued to redact materials released under FoIA, including a remarkable 290-page redaction in a recent release. Even more incredibly, at some point after March 2020 a number of early SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences were deleted from the NIH’s own archive at the request of researchers in Wuhan.
The strangeness doesn’t end here. In February 2020, an influential letter signed by 27 global experts was published in the Lancet, strongly condemning “conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin”. The letter proved crucial, alongside the aforementioned Nature paper, in nipping in the bud the lab-leak hypothesis and giving the illusion of scientific consensus. In late 2020, however, emails released following a FoIA request showed that the Lancet statement had been orchestrated by one of the 27 co-authors – none other than Peter Daszak, President of EcoHealth Alliance. It was also revealed that all but one of the other 26 scientists were linked to the Wuhan lab, their colleagues or funders.
Daszak was first appointed in late 2020 as Chair of the task force created by the Lancet COVID-19 Commission with the aim of establishing none other than “the origins of COVID-19”; and shortly thereafter as the only U.S. representative to a WHO fact-finding mission to China tasked with the same goal. Unsurprisingly, both task forces found that the virus was most likely zoonotic (i.e., natural) in origin, and that transmission through a laboratory incident was extremely unlikely.
The WHO report, in particular, came under heavy criticism, leading to the establishment of a specific work group tasked with ascertaining the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the Scientific Advisory Group on the Origins of Novel Pathogens, which published its first preliminary report in June 2022. The results were inconclusive, largely because “key pieces of data” from China were missing, leading the WHO to recommend in its strongest terms yet that a deeper probe was required into whether a lab accident may be to blame. As we have seen, however, it’s not only the Chinese government that is covering up its tracks about its possible involvement in the engineering of SARS-CoV-2 – but the American one as well.
Thomas notes that a new campaign is now underway to try to finally discredit the lab-leak theory, with two new studies that purport to provide more evidence that SARS-CoV-2 came from the Huanan Seafood Market leading several outlets to claim that “the Covid lab leak theory is dead” – a claim to which the Daily Sceptic‘s Dr. Noah Carl has responded here.
The question is, with those involved having closed ranks and refusing to speak or cooperate, who can force them to reveal their secrets, or must we accept that their cover-up has succeeded?
Follow the Science or Follow the Evidence?
Comment on Lord Sumptions’s Times editorial
By Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan | Trust the Evidence | August 29, 2022
Throughout restrictions which Lord Sumption called a “catastrophe”, we were exposed to the mantra of “follow the science”. But unfortunately, the only “science” that seems to have been followed in the major decisions is that of modellers and government departments.
Models are akin to opinions. If they are science, the evidence they provide sits on the lowest rung of the ladder. Modellers are accountable to no one; most have never seen a patient in their lives as they have no clinical background, which impedes their understanding of how people behave. Individuals are not herds of buffalos. Some modellers have a consistent track record of getting their predictions dramatically wrong with (again) catastrophic consequences.
Since the start, we have looked at the evidence underpinning the fear-generating narrative pushed by the government, some politicians, the media and many Twitterati, who overnight forgot the principles of scientific investigation, equipoise or uncertainty and the work of many pioneers in respiratory virus epidemiology spanning a century.
The psychotic narrative rests on three legs of what we call the Covid narrative stool.
The first leg is the number of cases. We have shown that misuse of polymerase chain reaction based on a superficial understanding amplified the number of “cases” as many of these were not likely to be infectious at all.
The second leg was the hospital pressure theme. Here using data which should have been available (but is not), we have shown that up to 40% of hospital cases were infected, a phenomenon which shows no sign of abating.
The data from three devolved nations and our interpretation have been serialised on this website.
Finally deaths. A death in epidemiology is the one inevitable outcome you can observe and tally. The question is: what caused it? This is called attribution. Looking at the data from freedom of information requests made by an alert public and the response at times by patronising authorities, we counted 14 different ways of attributing deaths to Covid-19. The first prize for the most bizarre was the Care Quality Commission’s: they left it to the care provider to decide the cause of death. So it is possible that administrators decided what role SARS-CoV-2 played in your grandmother’s death. In one health authority’s case, deaths of people who tested “negative” were rolled into the Covid total.
So the catastrophe described by Lord Sumption was underpinned by very weak evidence; science was nowhere to be seen. Consequently, it remains impossible to separate the impact of SARS-CoV-2 from that of the policies designed to “combat” it.
As the usual sources start gearing up to call for a new round of interventions and restrictions, have these massive cracks in evidence gathering and interpretation been tackled?
Hands up, who’s got the answer?
Nuclear official slams IAEA demands from Iran as ‘excessive’
Press TV – August 30, 2022
The spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) has described the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) demands as “excessive,” saying they cannot be implemented due to the sanctions in place against the Islamic Republic.
“We consider the IAEA’s demands excessive, because their implementation is impossible due to sanctions,” Behrouz Kamalvandi said on Tuesday.
Kamalvandi elaborated on the current scope of Iran-IAEA ties, saying Tehran’s cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog is based on the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement (CSA), which, he added, revolves around the agency’s inspection of nuclear materials.
Aside from the CSA, he added, countries adhering to the Additional Protocol, have undertaken to give the IAEA access for inspection of their uranium enrichment equipment as well.
The official said Iran used to provide the UN nuclear watchdog with even broader access for inspection as part of the 2015 nuclear deal, which is currently in trouble due to Washington’s unilateral exit.
Iran, he said, decided to restrict the scope of its cooperation with the IAEA to the SCA under a law approved by the Iranian Parliament in late 2020, entitled “The Strategic Action Plan to Counter Sanctions.”
The law tasked the Iranian administration to take a set of measures to protect national interests, including limiting cooperation with the IAEA, in response to Washington’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal and the European signatories’ failure to uphold their contractual commitments to Tehran.
Kamalvandi added, however, that “if the West lifts the sanctions and lives up to its own commitments under the nuclear deal, Iran will reciprocate,” he added.
Referring to Iran’s removal of 27 surveillance cameras at different nuclear sites, Kamalvandi said that if the other parties return to their commitments, it would be possible for the devices and cameras to be reinstalled.
Tehran will continue its constructive cooperation with the UN nuclear agency in line with its commitments under the CSA, the official added.
Iran ratified the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1970, which requires nonnuclear-weapon states to accept comprehensive IAEA safeguards. Four years later, Tehran concluded a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA.
As a goodwill gesture, Iran voluntarily chose to have extensive cooperation with the UN nuclear agency, beyond the safeguards agreement.
Back in June, Iran decided to stop its voluntary cooperation with the UN nuclear agency, while stressing that Iran’s commitments under the agreement will continue.
Iran and the IAEA are currently locked in a dispute triggered by the agency’s Israeli-influenced accusations, which were leveled against Tehran’s peaceful nuclear activities just as the Islamic Republic and other parties to the Iran deal appeared close to an agreement on reviving the Iran deal.
Iran asserts that an agreement on the revival of the Iran nuclear deal hinges on the settlement of Safeguards issues between Tehran and the IAEA, and that without settling those issues, reviving the 2015 accord makes no sense.
Last week, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi repeated previous accusations against the Islamic Republic, calling on Iran to explain what he claimed to be “traces of enriched uranium” found at the country’s nuclear research sites three years ago.
In an interview with with CNN on August 22, Grossi said the Agency would not drop that probe without “technically credible explanations” from Iran.
This is while Iran has already provided the necessary information and access to the IAEA.
Hungary to Ask Europe to Stop Escalation of Ukrainian Crisis, Foreign Minister Says
Samizdat – 30.08.2022
BUDAPEST – Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto stated on Tuesday that he will ask Europe to stop any actions that escalate the crisis in Ukraine.
“A the meeting of the EU foreign ministers today I will ask that we finally reject the proposals that entail the threat of further escalation… and that we focus on establishing peace in Europe,” Szijjarto said ahead of the informal ministerial meeting in Prague.
According to the minister, if there is no peace in Ukraine in the near future, the consequences of this conflict will be even more tragic, with more people becoming refugees, and Europe facing an unprecedented crisis. The question of Europe’s energy supply will become even more serious, Szijjarto said.
Earlier, Russia sent a note to NATO countries over arms supplies to Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed that any cargo that contains weapons for Ukraine will become a legitimate target for Russia. The Russian Foreign Ministry said that NATO countries were “playing with fire” by supplying weapons to Ukraine. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted that pumping Ukraine with weapons from the West does not contribute to the success of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations and will only have a negative effect.
Russia cuts off gas supply to French energy giant
Samizdat | August 30, 2022
Russian state energy giant Gazprom has said it has cut off gas supplies to France’s utilities company Engie. The French side has failed to pay for the gas deliveries in July in full, the Russian company added.
Gazprom informed Engie that it would cease the gas deliveries starting September 1 until the moment it gets the payment for the already supplied gas in full, the energy giant said in a statement. It also noted that the French side had failed to make the payment by Tuesday evening, making any further gas deliveries impossible under the Russian law.
Earlier on Tuesday, Engie said that Gazprom informed it “of a reduction in gas deliveries” and cited “a disagreement between the parties on the application of some contracts,” according to Bloomberg. It did not provide any details about the nature of the disagreements and did not specify the level of delivery reductions.
French Energy Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher accused Moscow of using its gas exports as a weapon on Tuesday. She also said that France “must prepare for the worst-case scenario of a complete interruption of supplies.” Her statement was made before the Gazprom announcement.
Engie maintained it “had already secured the volumes necessary to meet its commitments towards its customers and its own requirements,” adding that it would take measures to “significantly reduce any direct financial and physical impacts” of the potential supply interruption by Gazprom.
The developments come as the EU governments are trying to fill up their gas storages in the face of the approaching heating season and reduced supply from Russia – one of the continent’s major gas suppliers. Earlier on Tuesday, Gazprom also said that Nord Stream 1 would be completely stopped from August 31 to September 2 for maintenance since it has only one operational compressor.
On Monday, Engie Executive Vice President Claire Waysand said that France has had its storages filled up by 90% and added that it should be enough to get through the winter.
A Death in Moscow
Was the car bomb intended to send a message or to escalate the conflict?
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • AUGUST 30, 2022
The horrific car bombing in Moscow that killed twenty-nine year old Darya Dugina last week raises many questions about the motives of the Ukrainian regime and its supporters that sent an assassin to murder a prominent Russian civilian who has no overt role in the government of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. It should be assumed that the target of the attack was Darya’s father, the philosopher and sociologist Aleksandr Dugin, who has been predictably denigrated by western media outlets like the Washington Post, which refers to Dugin as “Putin’s brain” or “Putin’s Rasputin” while the New York Times lamely calls him a “Russian ultranationalist.”
Dugin, to be sure, is a powerful media figure well known in Europe who is a strong supporter of the Kremlin’s military initiative against Ukraine which is currently playing out. It appears that he has never even met Putin, which means that I have met Putin more than he has, let alone advised him, and he is generally viewed as a marginal figure in his own country. To be sure, he is known for his fiery rhetoric and hawkish anti-Western and anti-American stance, envisioning as he does Russia serving “as a serious bulwark against the ubiquitous spread of the Western liberal model on the planet.” President Vladimir Putin’s August 16th speech to foreign dignitaries at the Moscow Conference on International Security would seem to confirm that the Russian leader generally at least shares Dugin’s perspective. Putin said that “The situation in the world is changing dynamically and the outlines of a multipolar world order are taking shape. An increasing number of countries and peoples are choosing a path of free and sovereign development based on their own distinct identity, traditions and values.”
Dugin, like Putin, is a genuine conservative in cultural terms and would reasonably be described as a Russian nationalist, believing as he does that Russia and its traditional values should be cherished rather that cast away in pursuit of the currently fashionable globalism. He, also like Putin, is protective of the Russian Orthodox Church, which makes him an anachronism or worse from the viewpoint of the cancel culture currently rampaging in the west.
I had the privilege of participating in a conference in 2018 in the Iranian city of Mashhad with Dugin and got to know him somewhat. He is a distinguished intellectual, a prolific writer and speaker, and a true son of Holy Russia. That he looks backwards at Russian history to select the cultural trends and tendencies to inspire him should be a positive example of a possible course to pursue for the many conservatives worldwide who have been appalled at what is being done to western civilization at the hands of the wreckers who are now in control of so many nations.
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has used surveillance camera footage and other resources to reconstruct what likely took place in the car bombing. First of all, the Dugins had no special security. Aleksandr Dugin led a life in the open, as did his daughter. They would both go to cultural and folk events and speak, often freely meeting with supporters, which is what they were doing on the day of the bombing as honored guests at a “Tradition” festival near Moscow. Aleksandr had no reason to believe that some government might seriously want to assassinate him, even though it is known that he was on the Ukrainian government’s notorious Myrotvorets Enemies of Ukraine “hit list” for alleged supporters of the Russian intervention, which even includes prominent antiwar “Pink Floyd” musician Roger Waters. The names on the list are blocked on the actual group website, but there are reportedly more than 200,000 entries on it, including many prominent Americans. Curiously, the Myrotvorets site has on the home page upper right-hand corner the addresses of the originators of the site, which are Langley Virginia, home of the CIA, and Warsaw Poland. Dugin was clearly wrong if he assumed the list was all just a bit of political theater.
According to the Russian police, a 42-year-old woman named Natalya Vovk, who also uses the surname Shaban, reportedly a member of the Ukrainian National Guard’s Azov Battalion, departed Ukraine on July 23rd in a vehicle with false Donbas plates, the region currently under Russian control. She drove into Russia together with her 12 year-old daughter Sophia Shaban as cover, changed the plates to those of Kremlin ally Kazakhstan, and then proceeded to rent an apartment in the building in Moscow where Darya lived. According to one report, Darya would often drive her father to meetings as he did not like to drive, but in this case, he switched to another car. Vovk, who may have had an accomplice who helped her obtain a fake Kazakh passport and may have aided in constructing the bomb, planted the device under the Dugin car and detonated it by remote control before fleeing to Estonia after again changing her car license plates to Ukrainian. It is to be presumed that Vovk was on a mission planned and authorized by Ukrainian intelligence (SBU).
No western government has denounced the assassination. The Ukrainian government has denied being behind the attack, though there have been reported celebrations in Kiev and elsewhere. Dugina was reportedly declared “liquidated” on the Myrotvorets site. The Washington Post has predictably editorialized its view that no one should believe anything that the Russians are reporting about the assassination, though one might more reasonably trust the Kremlin than the US Capital’s leading source of media disinformation. Likewise, the British media quickly jumped into the fray, suggesting that it was the Russians themselves, either a dissident group or agents sent by Putin, who did the foul deed. Even the Pope was on the receiving end after he described Darya Dugina as an “innocent victim.” Andrii Yurash, Ukraine’s ambassador to the Holy See, tweeted that the Pope’s words were “disappointing…how (is it) possible to mention one of ideologists of (Russian) imperialism as innocent victim? She was killed by Russians.” But, to be sure, unless additional information appears, there is nothing in the Russian government reconstruction of events that appears to be a fabrication as it is largely supported by surveillance camera video clips and photos of those involved.
There remain, however, two major questions that have not been answered or even addressed at this point. The first is motive and the second relates to which other countries might have been involved in the planning and execution of the bombing. And there is a back story that might contribute to a better understanding of what exactly took place and why. Dugin, for all his brilliant academic credentials and lack of any Russian government position, is regarded as actively hostile to the interests of the United States, possibly because of his support of the attack on Ukraine, and has been both sanctioned and become a person of interest for American law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Darya was also sanctioned.
By “person of interest” I mean that the national security agencies have applied their information collection resources to monitor where Dugin goes, whom he is in contact with, and to learn what are the various groups that he is involved with. That information would all by itself be suggestive in terms of the apparent plan to assassinate Dugin by car bomb, but it also fits in neatly with several other connections. First of all, the actual capabilities of the Ukrainian intelligence services are not clearly understood, but it is well known within the US intelligence community that the CIA, MI-6 and Mossad are all in Ukraine actively engaged in training and advising their local counterparts. The bombing in Moscow required considerable sophistication as it used prior intelligence, multiple license plates and presumably also identity documents when borders were crossed, something the Ukrainians acting alone might not have been able to accomplish.
So did the United States, Britain, and/or the Israelis know what their Ukrainian counterparts were planning? More than that, did they collude in the operation or provide intelligence that made it possible? NATO member Estonia’s apparent cooperation in aiding the exfiltration of Vovk rather suggests a broadly based intelligence operation. The Israelis in particular are adept at that type of cross border targeted assassination operation, having used similar tactics to kill Iranian scientists and technicians. And they might have also had a secondary motive in targeting Dugin over his criticisms of the Jewish role in the terror that followed the Bolshevik revolution as well as its enormous overrepresentation both in the current Russian oligarchy as well as in the new American and globalist elite. Interestingly, Putin has also angered the Israeli government by his criticism of the recent lethal attacks on the Palestinians and by his closure of the Jewish Agency for Israel which arranges the emigration of Jews from Russia to the Jewish state.
If foreign intelligence services were involved, that also would imply that the respective governments might have approved of the assassination attempt, which could suggest a motive beyond just warning Russia that its apologists could be killed even in Moscow at any time. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pressured his “allies” to get more involved in the fighting in his country, beyond the provision of billions of dollars and weapons. The killing of Dugin might have been seen as a possible provocative move to encourage Moscow to over-react in response, leading to still more western involvement, perhaps to include NATO and other allied troops appearing on the battlefields to confront Putin directly. To be sure, one is not encouraged by statements coming out of the mouths of western leaders and NATO revealing that the real objective of the fighting is to weaken Russia and possibly bring about regime change, which increases the likelihood that Moscow will take a hard line in its reaction. Nor was it exactly encouraging to hear a befuddled President Joe Biden’s calling Putin a “war criminal” and Moscow’s intervention a “genocide” while also committing the US to endure whatever it takes for as long as it takes to make sure that Ukraine “wins” the war, which is a virtual promise to escalate the conflict.
It is also ironic that the US Congress is toying with the idea of declaring Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism” when it is Washington-ally Ukraine that is in fact using terror. It might seem inconceivable that anyone would plot to assassinate a prominent Russian in order to further escalate a conflict that is already edging perilously close to a nuclear exchange, but there you have it. If Zelensky and his neocon advisers set the trap to deepen the involvement of Washington in their war, Biden should have recognized the folly and backed completely out of the conflict. But there is little chance of that, unfortunately. When it comes to Russia, the hawks are both bipartisan and firmly in control.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Who Owns UK’s Offshore Wind Farms?
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | August 30, 2022
https://ref.org.uk/generators/search.php
I wrote yesterday about the ownership of the London Array offshore wind farm, To recap, London Array is jointly owned by the German owned RWE, the Canadian investor CDPQ, Orsted the Danish state owned energy company and he strategic investment company of the Government of Abu Dhabi, MASDAR. At current wholesale prices, London Array is making about £800 million a year more than they would have at 2019 prices.
None of the consortium are retail electricity suppliers in the UK, so would be shielded from any windfall tax on or nationalisation of energy suppliers, as has been suggested.
I thought I would look at some of the other big wind farms, which are subsidised by ROCs. The chart above is provided by the Renewable Energy Foundation, and I have listed below the owners of the eight other wind farms with capacity of 300 MW and over.
Race Bank – Macquarie, Orsted, Sumitomo Bank
Greater Gabbard – RWE Renewables, SSE Renewables
Gwynt y Mor – RWE Renewables, Stadtwerke Munchen, UK Green Investment Bank
Rampion – RWE Renewables, Enbridge, Offshore Wind Company
Galloper – RWE Renewables, Siemens, Macquarie, ESB, Spring Infrastructure
West Duddon – Scottish Power, Orsted
Thanet – Vattenfall
Sheringham – Equinor, Statkraft, UK Green Investment Bank
In short, they are nearly all wholly owned by a mix of foreign energy companies, banks and other infrastructure investors. As with the London Array, all of these wind farms/owners would be unaffected by taxes on energy retailers, with the exception of SSE and Scottish Power.
The combined output of these eight and London Array is about 16 TWh a year. At current prices of £375/MWh, the excess profit now being “earned” is around £5 billion a year.
‘FBI agent accused of sabotaging Hunter Biden probe resigns’
Samizdat | August 30, 2022
A senior FBI official accused of thwarting an investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged criminality has left the agency under mysterious circumstances, the Washington Times reported on Monday. The agent, Timothy Thibault, has been accused by Republicans of burying “verified and verifiable” information that could compromise the Biden family.
Thibault, an assistant special agent in charge of the bureau’s Washington, DC field office, abruptly left the agency last week. Two former FBI agents told the Washington Times that Thibault was forced to leave his post, with one of these former officials saying that he was escorted out of the office by two or three “headquarters-looking types.”
Despite the assertions of these former agents, the Washington Times noted that “it was not clear whether Mr. Thibault left on his own accord or was forced out of the bureau.”
Thibault had, however, been on leave for at least a month, during which time Republican lawmakers accused him of participating in a corrupt scheme to bury damaging information on President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, in the runup to the 2020 election.
In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray last month, Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) claimed that Thibault ordered an investigation into “derogatory Hunter Biden reporting” closed in October 2020. Citing unnamed whistleblowers, Grassley said that Thibault closed the matter without providing a valid reason, and marked it in FBI systems “so that it could not be opened in the future.”
Earlier this summer, Thibault was hammered by Republicans for making derogatory social media posts about former President Donald Trump whilst working on an investigation into Trump’s political opponent’s son.
Hunter Biden was under investigation at the time for alleged tax offenses, and the New York Post published stories based on the contents of the president’s son’s laptop that same month. Files on the laptop, which have since been independently verified, implicated Hunter Biden in drug abuse, transactions with prostitutes, and numerous foreign graft schemes from which the Biden family stood to gain tens of millions of dollars.
Grassley’s letter also accused another FBI agent, an intelligence analyst named Brian Auten, of incorrectly labeling information about Hunter’s “criminal financial and related activity” as “disinformation.” The agency would later use the same term to warn Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg against allowing the laptop story to spread on his platform ahead of the 2020 election, Zuckerberg told podcast host Joe Rogan last week.
During his recent testimony before the Senate, Wray downplayed Thibault’s role in the Hunter Biden laptop probe, but – before cutting his testimony short – told Republican Senator Joe Kennedy (Louisiana) that the contents of Grassley’s letter were “deeply troubling.” However, he did comment on whether the allegations within were true or false.
“Political bias should have no place at the FBI, and the effort to revive the FBI’s credibility can’t stop with his exit,” Grassley told the Washington Times. “We need accountability, which is why Congress must continue investigating.”
Europeans Paying for Brussels’ ‘Irrational and Absurd’ Energy Policy While US Profits: Kremlin
By Ilya Tsukanov – Samizdat– 30.08.2022
The European Union and individual bloc members have taken a series of measures in recent months to reduce reliance on Russian oil, gas and coal. These efforts sent energy prices skyrocketing, and are threatening to plunge the bloc into a cold winter. Russian President Vladimir Putin has characterized European policymakers’ actions as “suicidal.”
Ordinary Europeans are being made to pay for their leaders’ “irrational” policies in relation to Russia, while Brussels’ American allies get rich from an energy bonanza, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.
“Step by step, unfortunately, both Brussels and individual European countries are demonstrating their absolute lack of reason,” Peskov told reporters on Tuesday.
“This is demonstrated in such anti-Russian impulses, outbursts of hatred for our country, through absolutely irrational and even absurd actions in the the energy field, for which the publics of European countries – the EU, Britain and so on, have to pay, but which make it possible for American companies to turn a profit, for example,” Peskov said.
Asked to comment on Brussels’ potential discussions of banning tourist visas for Russians, the Kremlin spokesman suggested that the possibility of even discussing such ideas at the EU level demonstrates the “set of irrational bordering on insanity” prevalent among the bloc’s political elites.
The United States and the European Union dramatically reduced purchases of Russian coal, oil and gas in the spring after Moscow launched a special operation to “demilitarize” Ukraine amid fears of an imminent push by Kiev to crush the fledgling Donbass republics. The measures have since been complemented by additional restrictions, including sanctions targeting equipment used by the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, and the closing down of overland pipelines running through Poland and Ukraine delivering energy to Europe. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was completed late last year and prepared for operation, remains dormant.
The deficit in Russian energy has resulted in a dramatic spike in prices, with European consumers forced to pay through the nose for utilities, while countries scramble to find alternative sources to fill up underground gas reserves to prepare for winter.
President Putin has characterized Brussels’ policies as “suicidal,” saying the self-imposed energy crisis will undermine the EU’s competitiveness vis-a-vis the United States and China.
Germany and France want Tiktokers deployed against Russia – Bloomberg
Samizdat – August 30, 2022
TikTokers and YouTubers could help the EU drive a wedge between the Russian government and the people, Germany and France have reportedly told other members of the bloc.
Ideas on how its members could influence Russian citizens were formulated in a document circulated ahead of this week’s high-level EU meeting in Prague, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The plan is meant for discussion behind closed doors, but the news agency said it had studied the document.
Berlin and Paris suggested enrolling popular video bloggers on platforms including YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Telegram, and VK to help disseminate EU-funded teaching courses on “media literacy,” according to Bloomberg. The courses will supposedly explain to Russians why they should dismiss “Russian propaganda” and trust “independent information” that counters what the Russian government says.
The EU should also target Russian-speaking minorities in other nations with content that serves the same goal, the report says. There is also a proposal for an “Internet Censorship Circumvention Hub” for Russians.
After Russia attacked Ukraine in late February, the EU significantly ramped up its efforts to silence Russian media within the bloc. Government-funded outlets RT and Sputnik were banned from broadcasting, while US-based tech giants such as Facebook stopped showing content from the news organizations on their platforms to EU residents. Brussels justified the censorship by the need to counter ‘Russian propaganda’.
Moscow also imposed restrictions on media, blacklisting some Western outlets in retaliation and introduced punishment for slander against Russia’s armed forces.