Trump Says Justice Department is ‘Corrupt’
Samizdat – 27.11.2022
WASHINGTON – Former US President Donald Trump has accused the US Department of Justice (DOJ) of corruption and of making false allegations against him.
“The ‘Justice’ Department is CORRUPT. Offered Christopher Steele $1,000,000 to lie about me, paid Russian a fortune to ‘get Trump,’ told Facebook not to mention the Hunter Biden Laptop before the Election, ‘it was Russian disinformation,’ when they KNEW it was not,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday.
Last month, Trump said that the decision by a US jury to acquit Russian national Igor Danchenko on charges of lying to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarding the Trump-Russia collusion probe shows the disgraceful nature of the US justice system.
The case against Danchenko started last November, when he pleaded not guilty to charges of lying to the FBI about his role in the discredited “Steele Dossier” used to allege collusion between Trump and the Kremlin during the 2018 US presidential election.
The prosecution contended that Danchenko lied to the authorities about the sources of information given to former British spy Christopher Steele for the dossier on purported contacts between Trump and Russian officials. The indictment against Danchenko accused him of fabricating the information.
A Special Counsel investigation did not find any proof of collusion between Trump and Russia.
Senior FBI intelligence analyst Brian Auten testified in court in October that the FBI had offered $1 million to Steele to provide evidence to back his allegations.
Fauci Grilled Under Oath in Social Media Censorship Case
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 23, 2022
Dr. Anthony Fauci today faced questions from Attorneys General Eric Schmitt (Missouri) and Jeff Landry (Louisiana) in their lawsuit against the federal government for allegedly colluding with Big Tech platforms to censor content critical of COVID-19 vaccines and countermeasures.
Fauci sat for a deposition one day after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily halted the depositions of three other Biden administration officials.
In a statement released Tuesday in advance of Fauci’s deposition, Schmitt said:
“Tomorrow, along with my colleague from Louisiana, my Office and I will depose Dr. Anthony Fauci in our lawsuit against the Biden Administration for allegedly colluding with social media companies to censor freedom of speech.
“Since we filed our landmark lawsuit, we have uncovered documents and discovery that show clear coordination between the Biden Administration and social media companies on censoring speech, but we’re not done yet. We plan to get answers on behalf of the American people. Stay tuned.”
The statement also quoted Jeff Landry:
“We all deserve to know how involved Dr. Fauci was in the censorship of the American people during the COVID pandemic; tomorrow, I hope to find out.
“And I will continue fighting for the truth as it relates to Big Government colluding with Big Tech to stifle free speech.”
Schmitt and Landry sued President Biden, Fauci and others on May 5. New Civil Liberties Alliance, a nonprofit group representing outspoken critics of COVID-19 vaccines and countermeasures, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, Aaron Kheriaty and also Jill Hines, joined the lawsuit in August, as did Jim Hoft, founder and editor-in-chief of The Gateway Pundit.
According to the complaint, government officials colluded with and coerced Big Tech and social media platforms to “suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints and content” relating to COVID-19.
Several officials named in the suit, including former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, argued they shouldn’t be required to be deposed, but a federal judge on Monday denied a request to quash Psaki’s subpoena.
The same judge, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, on Oct. 21 ordered Fauci and other government officials to provide depositions under oath.
In addition to Fauci and Psaki, other government officials slated to be deposed include:
- FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan
- Carol Crawford, chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Digital Media Branch
- Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly
- White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty
- Daniel Kimmage, an official at the State Department’s Global Engagement Center
- U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy
Two lower-level officials were listed as alternates: Lauren Protentis of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in place of Easterly, and former White House COVID-19 adviser Andrew Slavitt in place of Flaherty.
A previous ruling had forced the above-named individuals to provide written testimony.
Judge rejects ‘self-serving blanket denials’
In his Oct. 21 ruling, Judge Doughty agreed with the plaintiffs that Fauci’s prior “self-serving blanket denials” regarding his role in censoring certain types of content and viewpoints on social media could not be taken at face value, necessitating a deposition.
Fauci challenged the order to sit for a deposition, arguing the communications in question are protected by executive privilege. But Judge Doughty ordered Fauci to turn over the documents within 21 days and to answer the plaintiffs’ questions in full.
Landry and Schmitt filed a request for depositions Oct. 10. In a statement released at the time by Schmitt, he said:
“After finding documentation of a collusive relationship between the Biden administration and social media companies to censor free speech, we immediately filed a motion to get these officials under oath.
“It is high time we shine a light on this censorship enterprise and force these officials to come clean to the American people, and this ruling will allow us to do just that. We’ll keep pressing for the truth.”
Depositions of three Biden administration officials on hold
In an order issued Monday, the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit temporarily halted the scheduled depositions of Easterly, Flaherty and Murthy.
According to Politico, the three-judge panel unanimously found Judge Doughty had erred in approving the depositions without first examining whether there were “other means” of obtaining the information the plaintiffs are seeking.
The court sent the case back to Doughty for further review. According to the order:
“Thus, before any of the depositions may go forward, the district court must analyze whether the information sought can be obtained through less intrusive, alternative means, such as further written discovery or depositions of lower-ranking officials.
“Written findings as to the availability and sufficiency of alternatives need to be entered.”
In a statement provided to The Defender by Landry’s office, Landry said, “These developments do not change my pursuit of the truth. We respect the court’s decision and will continue in the discovery phase of this case.”
Thursday’s court order came after lawyers for the government argued the plaintiffs should not have the ability to depose the three officials in question, on the basis that they are high-ranking government officials, and that the depositions would “unavoidably distract” them from “their important and time-sensitive duties,” which would “cause irreparable harm.”
However, the federal government’s motion for a partial stay of Judge Doughty’s deposition order was denied. The Nov. 21 order stated, “We make no ruling on the petition … at this time.”
Easterly, Flaherty and Murthy were scheduled to be deposed in early December.
On Wednesday Judge Doughty, in a separate ruling, ordered Psaki to sit for a deposition and rejected an attempt to shield FBI Agent Chan from answering questions under oath.
Plaintiffs in the case argued that none of the officials were “high-ranking,” and Judge Doughty agreed, finding that the “burdens” the officials would face as a result of sitting for depositions were outweighed by the necessity of gathering more information regarding the allegations in question prior to ruling on a motion for a preliminary injunction.
According to the 5th Circuit’s order:
“It is not enough, as the district court found, that these officials may have ‘personal knowledge’ about certain communications.
“That knowledge may be shared widely or have only marginal importance in comparison to the ‘potential burden’ imposed on the deponent.”
According to the court, the government already produced “extensive written discovery.” The government claims that these documents do not reveal any violations of the First Amendment, while the plaintiffs claim otherwise.
Politico also reported that the 5th Circuit asked Judge Doughty to consider ruling on the overall viability of the lawsuit before allowing the depositions to proceed.
The 5th Circuit said Judge Doughty should have not issued a ruling regarding the depositions until the courts decided on the government’s motion to dismiss — even though that motion was withdrawn after plaintiffs filed an amended complaint and the government has not filed a new motion to dismiss.
According to Politico, the 5th Circuit’s order is not final: Judge Doughty may still decide, based on a newly clarified analysis, that depositions of Easterly, Flaherty and Murthy are needed.
Politico also reported that the 5th Circuit’s order may strengthen efforts by Psaki and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to halt her deposition.
At a recent hearing, Psaki’s lawyers claimed there is no evidence she had met or had been in contact with any social media executives regarding purported “misinformation,” although she did express critical remarks about social media platforms during White House press briefings.
In his Nov. 21 order, Judge Doughty rejected that claim, writing:
“Despite the fact that Psaki is a former high-ranking official, the potential burden upon Psaki was outweighed by the need to determine whether free speech had been suppressed.”
Previously, a federal judge in Virginia rejected the arguments made by Psaki and the DOJ, including that sitting for a deposition would place an “undue burden” on her, taking her away from her family and her new job at MSNBC for several days.
Magistrate Judge Ivan Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia passed the issue to Judge Doughty. Davis dismissed Psaki’s claims, arguing that Psaki and the DOJ were attempting an “end-run” around the deposition order.
Judge Doughty previously found “that Plaintiffs have proven that Jennifer Psaki has personal knowledge about the issue concerning censorship across social media as it related to COVID-19 and ancillary issues of COVID-19.”
“Psaki has made a number of statements that are relevant to the Government’s involvement in a number of social-media platforms’ efforts to censor its users across the board for sharing information related to COVID-19,” Judge Doughty added. “Any burden on Psaki is outweighed by the need to determine whether free speech has been suppressed.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
“You won’t answer the question” – Senator Rand Paul confronts FBI on scooping up online user data
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | November 19, 2022
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) confronted FBI Director Christopher Wray about the collusion with social media companies and whether the FBI scoops up private information to identify users.
“Is Facebook or any other social media company supplying private messages or data on American users that is not compelled by the government or the FBI?” Paul asked Wray. “No warrant, no subpoena, they’re just supplying you information on their users?”
“I don’t believe so, but I can’t sit here and be sure of that as I sit here,” Wray replied.
“Can you give us a yes or no by going back to your team and asking? Because it’s a very specific question. Because if they are, it’s against the law,” Paul said, invoking the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986. “This was done to protect the privacy of people so we could feel like we can send an email or direct message to people without having that information given over. It’s a very specific question: Will you get with your team of lawyers and give us a specific answer? Because this is the law. If you’re doing it, then we need to go to court to prevent you from receiving this information.”
“Well, I can tell you that I’m quite confident that we’re following the law —, ” Wray started.
“Well, that’s not the answer, ” Paul responded.
“ — but what I will also follow up with you to make sure we get you more information; more detailed information,” Wray added.
“Is the FBI obtaining anonymous social media data and then using technical methods to pierce the anonymous nature of the data?” Paul questioned.
Wray paused before asking, “Anonymous social media data?”
“So you purchase data,” Paul said. “People purchase data all the time and we sort of tolerate it for advertising and things because it’s anonymous data. Are you purchasing what is said to be anonymous data through the marketplace and then piercing the anonymous nature to attach individual names to that data? Are you purchasing data and then piercing the anonymous nature of that data?”
“So the manner in which we use — we usually use the term commercial data — is probably longer than I can explain here. But again, let me —, ” Wray said appearing to dodge the question.
“So you will not answer the question of whether or not you’re attaching names to anonymous data,” Paul stated.
“I think it’s a more complicated answer than I can give here,” Wray responded.
“So, so far we’re 0 for 2 at getting you to answer this, but you’re pledging you will actually answer the question because you have to realize the frustration; we’ll write you a letter and your team of lawyers will write back with a 15-page letter that says nothing and you won’t answer the question. These are very specific. This is whether you’re obeying the law, whether we can have confidence. I want to have confidence,” Paul said.
“We are obeying the law,” Wray responded.
“Well, you’re saying that, but you won’t tell us the answer,” Paul stated. “You aren’t telling me the answer. And the answer is: Are you collecting data not compelled by a warrant? That would not be in compliance with the law. But you won’t answer that you’re not collecting that data.”
Eventually, Paul asked, “Are you getting tips and leads from social media companies?”
“We get tips and leads from companies, absolutely,” Wray acknowledged.
“You may think this is jolly well to get all this stuff without a warrant that people volunteer to you, but many of us are alarmed that you’re getting this information that are private communications between people because it is against the law – it’s against the law for Facebook or social media companies to give it to you, but it’s also against the law for you to receive it,” Paul ended.
Did Federal Censors Swing the 2020 Election?
By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | November 14, 2022
Did the Russiagate conspiracy entitle the federal government to censor Americans forever? Did federal shenanigans swing the 2020 election? A new report reveals how a new federal agency and federal grantees exploited a 2016 scam to launch the greatest covert censorship campaign in U.S. history.
In 2016, top FBI officials and the Obama administration fueled a conspiracy that the Trump presidential campaign was colluding with the Russian government. Numerous false FBI claims spurred a massive wiretapping operation approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The allegations led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who spent two years investigating before admitting that there was nothing to prosecute for his primary charge. But by that point, Trump had been irredeemably tainted and the Democrats had exploited the controversy to capture control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018.
Thanks to Russiagate, Congress created a new federal agency in 2018—the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). CISA was purportedly intended to fight foreign threats to election security and U.S. infrastructure. But the agency quickly shifted its target to American citizens. As a report last week from the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO) revealed, “Any U.S. citizen posting what DHS considered misinformation’ online was suddenly conducting a cyber attack against US critical infrastructure.”
CISA and DHS realized that they could not directly muzzle Americans so they colluded with a number of federal grantees who comprised the Election Integrity Project, a coalition formed in mid-2020. The result was “censorship by proxy,” as law professor Jonathan Turley observed, bludgeoning social media companies into submission. The DHS-spurred crackdown in 2020 resulted in the suppression of “22 million tweets labeled ‘misinformation’ on Twitter” and “hundreds of millions of individual Facebook posts, YouTube videos, TikToks, and tweets impacted” thanks to changes that would not have occurred without “‘huge regulatory pressure’ from government,” FFO reported.
Once the government claims a prerogative to censor “misinformation,” the definition of misinformation mushrooms to serve political purposes. The Election Integrity Partnership bragged about how social media posts were targeted that were merely purportedly guilty of offenses such as “exaggerate issue,” “misleading stats” and “out of context.” Many of those alleged factual infractions were piddling compared to the sweeping falsehoods continually uncorked by presidential candidates Trump and Biden.
Prior to the 2020 election, “the censorship focus was always and consistently foremost targeted at speech casting doubt on mail-in ballots,” FFO reported. Democrats exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to push through electoral changes that opened the floodgates to unverified mail-in ballots. Some states like Michigan sent absentee ballots to all voters, violating the Election Clause of the Constitution (which specifies that state legislatures make the rules for federal elections).
Election regimes that scrutinized mail-in ballots routinely had a high rejection rate. New York City relied on mail-in ballots for a June 2020 primary that the New York Daily News derided as a “dumpster fire.” Up to 20% of ballots “were declared invalid before even being opened, based on mistakes with their exterior envelopes,” The Washington Post noted, thanks largely to missing postmarks or signatures. Trump claimed that the shift to mail-in ballots could result in “the most corrupt vote in our nation’s history.”
But federal string-pulling minimized controversies. FFO noted, “Pre-censoring U.S. citizen debate about mail-in ballots five months before an election has the impact of devastating the ability of concerned citizens to pressure their state representatives to take legal action on changing voting procedures.” Rather than the traditional scrutiny for mail-in ballots, many locales defaulted to accepting practically any piece of paper with a mark. Mail-in ballots determined the outcome of the 2020 election. Trump received more votes on Election Day but 43,000 mail-in ballots in three states sealed Biden’s victory—a minuscule portion of the tens of millions of mail-in votes he received.
In a July 28, 2020 article for the American Institute for Economic Research, I warned that the controversies over mail-in ballots could lead to “the death of political legitimacy…Deep State federal agencies are a Godzilla that have established their prerogative to undermine if not overturn election results.”
Until I read the new FFO report, I did not realize that “the biggest category for [2020] censorship was ‘delegitimization’… defined to mean any speech that ‘casts doubt’ on any kind of election process, outcome or integrity issues [which] made all conservative and populist criticism of the administration of the election pre-banned at the narrative level, five months in advance of Election Day.” Damn, no wonder that article of mine got so little traction on Twitter and Facebook! “Delegitimization” resulted in “72% of its censorship tickets and targeted over 99% of the posts throttled by narrative during the 2020 election.”
The entire process looks like a Monty Python parody of democracy. As Mike Benz, the former State Department official who heads FFO, observed, “The same obscure DHS subagency tasked with election security also gained the power to censor any questions about election security.”
How much impact did federal censorship and suppression have on the most recent elections? The Election Integrity Project browbeat tech companies to accept “that social media posts about the 2022 elections be censorable under a low bar of simply ‘misleading,’” according to FFO. For the midterm elections, “the Election Integrity Project is tightly monitoring and working to censor ‘discussions surrounding the delays in counting ballots’ being ‘framed as fraud,’” FFO reported. Damned convenient considering the debacle in Arizona—which was foreseen if not foreordained. In a Washington speech just before the election, President Biden told listeners that “in some cases we won’t know the winner…until a few days after the election. It takes time to count all legitimate ballots in a legal and orderly manner.” Biden stressed that citizens must be “patient. That’s how this is supposed to work.”
But it never consistently worked that way before in American history. Arizona’s voting machines dismally failed on Election Day and Democrats are vehemently resisting a hand recount of all ballots.
The real goal is to control Americans’ minds—and not just on Election Day. Jen Easterly, the NSA honcho who Biden chose to run CISA, declared that “the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation… is incredibly important.” And the most important cognitive “fix” is to train Americans to never doubt Uncle Sam. In a March 2022 meeting with top Twitter executives, FBI official Laura Dehmlow “warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government,” The Intercept recently reported. The FBI has 80 agents on a task force to curb “subversive data utilized to drive a wedge between the populace and the government.”
“Disinformation” is often simply the lag time between the pronouncement and the debunking of government falsehoods. If the feds can censor most if not almost all of their online critics, their cons become almost irrefutable. Perhaps that is the only way that many federal policies can retain any shard of legitimacy. As Mike Benz warns, “DHS is carrying out an official state policy that if public trust is not earned, it must be installed.” That is a recipe for the death of democracy.
Jim Bovard is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors and has also written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and other publications. His articles have been publicly denounced by the chief of the FBI, the Postmaster General, the Secretary of HUD, and the heads of the DEA, FEMA, and EEOC and numerous federal agencies.
FBI Lobbying Congress For New Laws That Allow Them To Pursue Children As “Domestic Terrorists”
By Eric Striker | The Main Street Tribune | November 5, 2022
The FBI is calling on Congress to pass laws giving federal agents greater authority to prosecute children in relation to what it categorizes as domestic terrorism, according to the Bureau’s recently released Strategic Intelligence Assessment and Data on Domestic Terrorism.
The report, which was presented to lawmakers last month, focuses primarily on the alleged threat landscape regarding what federal officials have dubbed “Domestic Violent Extremism,” or DVE.
The assessment points out that federal domestic terrorism investigations grew to record highs during the relevant year of analysis, largely due to the mass classification of Donald Trump supporters arrested for entering the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021 as Domestic Violent Extremists.
Tucked away in the 44-page report’s “Legislative Initiatives” section, the Department of Homeland Security and FBI contend that existing federal law sets the bar for arresting and prosecuting juvenile investigative targets too high:
“The FBI is actively working with DOJ on some broader legislative initiatives that can benefit both federal investigations and prosecutions, including those relating to DT. For example, there are ongoing discussions about adjusting legislation in response to the challenges in disrupting juvenile threat actors via federal law enforcement actions. We will inform and work with the Congress in the event we identify any critical gaps in our authorities that may have negative effects on our ability to accomplish our mission.”
The topic of “disrupting juvenile threat actors via federal law enforcement actions” is not extrapolated upon further, but a recent forum featuring intelligence operatives from multiple agencies revealed the depth of the FBI’s fixation on children it perceives as holding a domestic violent extremist political ideology.
At an October 24th discussion hosted by the Homeland Security Experts Group (HSEG) — a privately controlled information sharing consortium overseen by former DHS secretary, PATRIOT Act co-author and Israeli citizen Michael Chertoff — the assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division Robert Wells stated that many children his agency identifies as DVE’s are not breaking any federal or state laws, but he believes they still require law enforcement intervention.
Wells goes on to state that the FBI is currently working with its Behavioral Analysis Unit to analyze children who are expressing a belief or sentiment that does not violate any laws in order to formalize a procedure for federal agents to take it upon themselves to intervene in their lives.
The FBI and Department of Justice’s war on domestic terror has been racked with controversy. Critics hold that the FBI and Department of Justice are using the pretense of fighting terrorism as a means towards the end of suppressing political opposition.
A 1,000 page report released earlier this week by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee details allegations of bias, incompetence, rampant corruption and statements made by several FBI whistleblowers that the Bureau’s campaign against “domestic terrorism” is nothing more than a naked political crackdown against Constitutionally protected right-wing and religious beliefs.
Among the specific charges made by over a dozen conscientious FBI agents, they contend that they were compelled by supervisors to manufacture fraudulent domestic terrorism data in order to justify increasing the federal government’s power to crush legitimate political activity the powerful people disagree with.
The civil liberties question of whether FBI agents have the legal right to monitor or interfere in the activities of minors who are not breaking any laws was not examined in its official assessment, nor was it raised in discussions hosted at the HSEG conference.
Feds Scramble To Hide Role Of Oath Keeper’s Informant In January 6th “Insurrection”
By Eric Striker | The Main Street Tribune | November 11, 2022
A bombshell New York Times report has revealed that Greg McWhirter, the Vice President of the Oath Keepers who helped lead the group’s presence on January 6th, is an FBI informant.
Federal officials worked hard to hide McWhirter’s status as a Confidential Human Source (CHS) in the seditious conspiracy trial of Oath Keeper’s leader Stewart Rhodes and his associates, presenting their asset in public filings as a mere “witness” instead.
In a furious November 8th filing, federal prosecutors accused defense attorneys of illegally disclosing confidential discovery about McWhirter to the press. It appears that the actual way McWhirter’s status was leaked was through a clerical error by DC court employees, who accidentally published the sealed document on the docket.
Federal officials have been suppressing information on the role their assets and agents played in inciting violence at the Capitol by having them testify as witnesses in cases related to January 6th.
McWhirter, a black Sheriff’s deputy in Montana, rose through the ranks of the Oath Keepers thanks in part to his existing contacts with law enforcement as well as his race. Rhodes regularly showcased McWhirter’s black heritage as evidence that he is not racist.
The infiltrator has also courted public controversy for other legally dubious stunts over the years. During the 2016 election, he called on members of his militia to patrol voting sites in order to discourage election fraud. In a more recent incident, he aided the FBI in attempting to manufacture an Oath Keeper’s conspiracy to kill members of Antifa in Portland as retaliation for the anarchist murder of Aaron Danielson.
Following the events of January 6th, McWhirter bought a gun shop and immediately began offering steep discounts on ammo and weapons to militia members, with implications that they had to prepare for civil war.
The defense for Rhodes, et al, was planning to call McWhirter as a witness in order to expose his role as an agitator. Yet, as the FBI informant boarded the plane to travel to his scheduled court appearance, he suffered heart trouble and could not testify. He is only 40-years-old.
On social media, many are speculating that federal agents either induced his emergency health issue with drugs or, more plausible, worked with him and his physician to fake the whole thing. In light of this curious coincidence, Rhodes’ defense was forced to rest its case without being able to cross examine the agent provocateur.
This is not the first irregular development in the trial. Witnesses Rhodes’ defense planned to call who were slated to tell the court that the defendants were innocent of plotting violence at the Capitol had FBI agents visit their homes right before they were scheduled to testify. The FBI agents told them that they would legally incriminate themselves and be prosecuted if they spoke in Rhodes’ defense. This intimidation tactic proved effective, leading to witnesses taking the fifth amendment when called, much to the shock and frustration of the defense.
McWhirter was not the only person working for the FBI inside the Oath Keepers. Another black member, Abdullah Rasheed, was also exposed in court for providing information on the group’s inner workings to federal agents in the run up to January 6th.
In addition to this, the FBI appears to be preparing to thwart expected Congressional inquiries into domestic counter-terrorism operations. Journalist Julie Kelly recently reported that Christopher Wray is rushing to replace the head of its Washington Field Office, Steven D’Antuono, who has led agents in using controversial tactics across the country to entrap persons with right-wing political beliefs of all types in fictitious terror plots. D’Antuono suddenly announced his retirement despite his recent lucrative and prestigious promotion, which will make it difficult for Congress to question him on his actions under the color of law in the last three years.
The Oath Keeper’s trial, which to date is the most serious and high profile prosecution of all January 6th cases, will soon be going to jury deliberation.
How sarcastic remarks became basis for resurrecting ‘Russiagate’
By Drago Bosnic | November 8, 2022
The so-called “Russiagate” conspiracy theory has been the main go-to scapegoat for the failures of the DNC, be it the 2016 presidential or 2018 midterm elections. For six years the mainstream propaganda machine has been parroting the supposed “Russian election meddling” narrative.
Despite the official investigation giving no proof to support the claims that Moscow secured the United States presidency for Donald Trump, “Russiagate” persisted even after he left office. Several major events, such as the humiliating US defeat in Afghanistan and the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, pushed the debunked conspiracy theory out of the spotlight for some time. Still, just when the world forgot about “Russiagate”, the propaganda machine decided to resurrect it as a scapegoat once again, this time for the 2022 midterms.
On November 7, The New York Times published a report claiming that the Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, the alleged “true founder and financial backer” of the “Wagner” PMC (private military company), made a “sardonic” statement about the supposed Russian meddling in 2022 US midterms. The Western mainstream media regularly accuse Prigozhin of “having close ties” with Russian President Vladimir Putin and they’ve even given him a rather cliché “supervillain” nickname – “Putin’s Chef”. Despite holding no official position in the Russian government, he is accused of conducting “clandestine operations” for the Kremlin, including alleged election interference.
“Gentlemen, we have interfered, we do interfere and we will [continue to] interfere,” Prigozhin said in a statement in response to a question from a Russian news outlet. “We will do it carefully, precisely, surgically as we are capable of doing it. During our targeted operations, we will remove both kidneys and liver at once,” he concluded in what was quite obviously a sarcastic remark. Russian news agency RIA Novosti described the comments as such as well, but the US mainstream propaganda machine is adamant that the statement is “clear proof” that Russia will supposedly affect the outcome of the 2022 midterm elections.
In 2018, Prigozhin was even indicted by the US that he funded and organized the so-called “troll factory” to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections, which was one of the staples of the “Russiagate” conspiracy theory. Despite no clear evidence that he did any of this, in 2021 the FBI put Prigozhin on its most-wanted list, while the US Treasury imposed sanctions on him for allegedly “organizing disinformation campaigns” in elections in Asia, Europe and Africa. The Biden administration placed additional sanctions on Prigozhin in March, due to his supposed “crucial role” in Russia’s counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe.
The US State Department also commented on Prigozhin’s statement, with the spokesman Ned Price calling it “a bold confession”. She added that it was “clear that a person of Mr. Prigozhin’s stature would not be in a position to make such claims unless the Kremlin, at some level didn’t approve.”
According to The New York Times, the unnamed “researchers” have supposedly “detected a new, though more concentrated, campaign by Russia to try to influence Tuesday’s midterm elections.” The alleged goal is “to empower angry conservative voters with the aim of undermining faith in American democracy … at a time when soaring energy prices and inflation threaten to dent support for the war, the campaign also appears intent on undermining the Biden administration’s extensive financial and military support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.”
The report further claims that “the campaign — using accounts that pose as enraged Americans — has specifically targeted Democratic candidates in the most heated races, including the Senate seats being contested in Ohio, Arizona and Pennsylvania.” The alleged “calculation appears to be that a Republican majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives could dent American support for the war in Ukraine.”
The claims are quite clearly yet another attempt to use foreign powers as scapegoats and an excuse between political opponents in the US. The New York Times is infamous for being one of the strongholds of the neoliberal portion of the US establishment. By accusing the “angry conservatives” of working with Russia, the outlet is obviously trying to discredit the GOP to help the Democrats and give them at least somewhat better chances in the midterms.
The Republicans themselves aren’t immune to this, as they also resort to it by accusing the DNC of working with China. However, in this particular case, the Democrats, terrified of the prospect of losing both the House of Representatives and the Senate, are trying everything in their power to sway public opinion toward supporting their policies, both domestic and foreign, the unpopularity of which has reached its peak in recent months.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Another Extraordinary Murder in Washington D.C.
Mary Mahoney was allegedly the victim of a botched robbery in the Georgetown Starbucks
Mary Mahoney, murdered on July 7, 1997
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | November 6, 2022
When Seth Rich was murdered in Washington D.C. on July 10, 2016, the Metropolitan Police Department immediately proposed that it was a “botched robbery.” The case reminded me of the murder of Mary Mahoney in a Georgetown Starbucks on July 7, 1997.
Mary Mahoney was an intern in Bill Clinton’s White House during his first term. She then got a job working as a manager of Starbucks in Georgetown, which was frequented by many notable figures in the Washington political establishment. Her murder (along with her two coworkers) was the first triple murder in the neighborhood’s history. Prior to the crime, not a single homicide had been committed in Georgetown for eighteen months.
Robbery appeared an unlikely motive, as none of the day’s cash proceeds had been taken from the store. Mahoney’s murder occurred during the same period that Newsweek reporter Mike Isikoff was investigating allegations that President Clinton had sexually harassed White House employees—an investigation that would ultimately lead him to Monica Lewinsky. Attorneys for Paula Jones were also seeking corroborating cases of Clinton’s sexual harassment of young women.
A year after the murder occurred, the police received a tip to examine a man named Carl D. Cooper from a woman who had just watched an America’s Most Wanted episode on the triple homicide. For several months, investigators found no evidence linking Cooper to the crime. Then another informant came forth—a former drug addict named Eric Butera, who was himself later murdered in “a robbery gone wrong.”
Based on information gleaned from Butera’s associates, Carl Cooper was arrested. After a grueling four-day interrogation, Cooper confessed, stating that the triple homicide was a “botched robbery” (which just happened to be the official working hypothesis). While held at gunpoint, Mary, refused to give Cooper the keys to the safe—a heroic act to save her 50 billion market cap employer from losing a few thousand dollars. Because Mary refused to give Cooper the keys, he shot her five times, including a shot to the back of the head. He then shot her two coworkers, and then left the store without taking a dime.
Cooper was convicted on the grounds of his confession to the Metropolitan Police. However, in a subsequent interview with an FBI investigator, Cooper recanted his confession. Although the FBI investigator unequivocally stated this in his testimony, the court concluded that Cooper’s initial confession was sufficient for his conviction. Cooper was initially represented by a court-appointed attorney, but after his trial began, his court-appointed attorney was joined by the prominent Washington D.C. defender, Francis D. Carter, who initially represented Monica Lewinsky when Monica stated her willingness to remain silent about her affair with Clinton. Carter drafted an affidavit for Monica in which she stated that she had NOT had an affair with the president. Carter was forced to withdraw this affidavit after Monica made statements to Lynda Tripp (equipped with a secret recording device) confirming her affair with Clinton.
That Carter joined the Carl Cooper defense team strikes me as very peculiar, especially given that Carter did not change the defense strategy. I wonder if Carter’s primarily job was—under cover of client-attorney confidentiality—to deliver a message to Carter pertaining to his sentencing prospects and what he might reasonably expect for his wife (to whom he was apparently very attached) if he stuck with his confession.
Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno initially sought the death penalty for Cooper— the first death-penalty matter brought to trial in the District in nearly 30 years, but federal prosecutors later withdrew this request. To date, no evidence has been found linking Cooper to the triple homicide.
In a related case, the District of Columbia was successfully sued for the wrongful death of Metropolitan Police informant, Eric Butera, as the jury concluded the police had been negligent in protecting him during an undercover operation to obtain more information about the Starbucks triple slaying. The woman who gave the initial tip to America’s Most Wanted later publicly accused the police of refusing to protect her and fell under suspicion for being motivated primarily by the reward money offered by the show.
Since the murders occurred, the crime has been the subject of extensive media coverage, several documentary television features, and hundreds of online commentators. Conventional newspaper coverage of the crimes—primarily conducted by the Washington Post and the Washington Times—consisted entirely of straightforward reporting of information provided by police and judicial officers.
Given the controversial nature of the police investigation and judicial proceedings against the man who was charged for committing the crime, it is surprising how little the mainstream media questioned official accounts. Likewise, the TV documentaries simply presented narratives provided by law officers as though they contained nothing that was questionable. This is particularly notable given that substantial details of the official narrative, provided by the same investigating officers, are represented differently in different documentaries. Moreover, some of officers’ statements in the documentaries pertaining to Starbucks procedures and security protocols are NOT consistent with what a veteran Starbucks manager told me.
I would like to interview Carl D. Cooper in prison, but I cannot find him in the federal prison system. Though I have not had the time and resources to dig deep into this component of the story, my preliminary research suggests that his whereabouts in the federal prison system have been concealed.
In 2016, the lead homicide detective in the Mary Mahoney case — Detective James Trainium — published a book titled How the Police Generate False Confessions. It’s a detailed examination of how the police obtain false confessions, and the author is clearly writing from personal experience.
FBI is ‘rotted at its core,’ Republican lawmakers say
RT | November 4, 2022
America is no longer a country where citizens are afforded equal justice under the law, as guaranteed by their Constitution, because the nation’s top law enforcement agency has been corrupted by politicized leadership and a “woke, leftist agenda” being imposed from the top, Republican lawmakers have claimed.
The allegations were contained in a 1,050-page report released on Friday by Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee. The report, which was based on information gathered from 14 FBI whistleblowers who came forward to expose a pattern of misconduct, argued that the agency was “rotted at its core.”
“Quite simply, the problem — the rot within the FBI — festers in and proceeds from Washington,” the report said. “The FBI and its parent agency, the Justice Department, have become political institutions.”
The report detailed such abuses as a secret partnership in which the FBI receives private information on conservative users from Facebook, without seeking their consent or going though the legal processes that would normally be required to tap such data.
Whistleblowers also alleged that the FBI “looked the other way” on dozens of attacks against anti-abortion groups, even as the agency sent heavily armed teams of officers to arrest pro-life activists at their homes for alleged violations of selectively enforced crimes. Parents who spoke out at school board meetings over controversial policies were targeted by investigators as alleged terrorists.
At the same time, former FBI official Timothy Thibault “shut down” a probe into the overseas business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and attempted to keep the case from being reopened, the report said. Thibault openly displayed his political bias in social media posts that included his official title.
“America’s not America if you have a Justice Department that treats people differently under the law,” Representative Jim Jordan, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, told Fox News on Friday. “It’s supposed to be equal treatment under the law. That’s not happening, and we know it’s not happening because 14 brave FBI agents came to us as whistleblowers and told us what exactly is going on here.”
The report also accused the FBI of inflating statistics on domestic extremism to help fuel a narrative promoted by President Joe Biden’s administration. FBI employees who have conservative views are being purged from the agency, it claims.
Republicans argued that the FBI was plagued by a “systemic culture of unaccountability,” as well as “rampant corruption, manipulation and abuse.” The agency’s shift toward “political meddling” has allegedly pulled resources away from legitimate law enforcement duties. For instance, one whistleblower claimed that he was told after the January 2021 US Capitol riot that child sex-abuse cases were “no longer an FBI priority and should be referred to local law enforcement agencies.”
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How Much of Science Is Reproducible?
BY NOAH CARL | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | DECEMBER 27, 2022
Reproducibility is the most fundamental yardstick in science. If a result can’t be replicated, it doesn’t count as science.
Yet in recent years, there has been much talk of a ‘replication crisis’. Many results that we assumed were robust simply cannot be replicated. The term is typically used in the context of psychology and medicine, though it may apply to other fields as well.
So how much of science is reproducible? One way of tackling this question is to select a large number of studies from a particular field and then attempt to replicate them. This has been done several times. … continue
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