The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has announced that it will be conducting “Falcon Virgo”, a routine air defense exercise, on Thursday, January 14, through Friday, January 15, and again on Monday, January 25, through Tuesday, January 26, between midnight and 5:30 a.m. EST each day in the National Capital Region.
Patriots remain in the dark about any potential ongoing operations and disinformation campaigns seem to be at an all time high in the wake of mass censorship, so we’ve taken to reporting on things that can be seen and verified. The exercise is being described as a “routine air defense exercise” and we make no claim that is anything but a simple routine exercise, but it may still inspire hope or comfort to some that the good people in our military are preparing to defend the country while global tensions are high, especially considering that rival nations appear to have a lot at stake in this election.
The aircraft participating in the flight exercise include Air Force F-16 aircraft, an Army UC-35A aircraft, a Navy King Air 300 aircraft, a Coast Guard MH-65D Dolphin helicopter, and Civil Air Patrol Cessna 182T general aviation aircraft. Some portions of the exercise could involve flights at approximately 2,500 feet and may be visible from the ground. If weather prevents regularly scheduled flights, the exercise will commence Jan. 27.
NORAD routinely conducts exercises with a variety of scenarios, including airspace restriction violations, hijackings, and responses to unknown aircraft. All NORAD exercises are carefully planned and closely controlled.
“Falcon Virgo is a recurring exercise in support of Operation NOBLE EAGLE, which places emphasis on the surveillance and control of airspace over Canada and the United States. The defense of North America is NORAD’s top priority and NORAD remains on alert around the clock, every day. This exercise is a part of NORAD’s routine training program.
For more than 60 years, NORAD aircraft have identified and intercepted potential air threats to North America in the execution of its aerospace warning and aerospace control missions, and maintain a watchful eye over Canadian and U.S. internal waterways and maritime approaches under its maritime warning mission.”
Former 8kun administrator Ron Watkins created a poll on Twitter Saturday evening asking: “Do you support limited Martial Law?” to which an astounding 89% answered yes.
The Poll results clearly indicate that many have lost faith in the Justice system in its response (or lack thereof) to Election fraud, among other things, and are prepared to support a more militant approach to resolving these issues if it indeed comes down to that.
Ron Watkins, son of the legendary, off-beat, 8chan operator and Philippine pig farmer Jim Watkins, also known on the platform as “CodeMonkeyZ”, has been very vocal over the past few years about several serious issues that have been completely neglected by the mainstream.
Most recently he has taken to posting Polls, and piggybacking off of this poll was another asking who folks think would likely end up being the Election Special Counsel or Special Prosecutor.
Ryan DeLarme & Justin Deschamps December 1st, 2020
The holiday season has begun and what better gift can you imagine this year than justice and vindication? It’s not going to happen overnight as we all know, but the month of December is shaping up to be explosive no matter how you slice it. Not that November wasn’t a bundle fun, it certainly had its share of juicy intrigue and propagated confusion resulting in sheer emotional chaos on both sides of the aisle.
The Biden/Harris “anyone’s better than Trump” crowd are still unwilling to see all of the dangerous and greasy connections that both Joe and Kamala enjoy; a thoroughly compromised CIA and the powerful international think-tanks behind them, not to mention China likely has enough blackmail on Biden that the CCP may as well be occupying the Whitehouse.
Then you have the Pro-Trump crowd, who are currently split; some are experiencing a dark night of the soul over the uncertainty of the election outcome, while others knew this was inevitable and see it as a positive thing.
There are theories floating around that this was all a long-planned “Sting Operation” to bring about awareness and to safeguard future elections, but also to show the world what has been happening regarding these “Voting Systems” not only here but in Central, South America and the world at large.
It’s our intention with this newsletter to shed light on things that are left (intentionally or otherwise) on the Mainstream Media’s cutting room floor. Before we get into the meat of this thing, let’s take a look at something that didn’t make headlines but probably should have.
Trump Economy
Trump’s economy set another record this week as DOW passed 30’000 for the first time in history in the wake of the global pandemic. This happened despite relentless attempts by the Deep-State players to crash the economy, making the victory that much sweeter.
The President phoned in to speak with Maria Bartiromo on the 29th, one of the few instances in the media where the fraud is mentioned beyond propaganda pieces smearing the idea that elections can even be rigged. You can watch the video where he clearly lays out his perspective below:
There was some slight anxiety over the Trump Legal Team “distancing itself” from Sidney Powell, but to the more discerning it is clear that they are separate but pursuing different paths toward the same objective. The Presidents Legal team is going the constitutional route where Powell is filing the Criminal Charges independently.
Rudy Giuliani appeared on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” to elaborate on how he’s looking into a different theory than Powell’s and explained it to Dobbs:
“I think it’s because we’re pursuing two different theories. Our theory of the case to get to the Supreme Court now in four places…and it’s soon going to be in two others. There’ll be an overall lawsuit…is basically misconduct of the election by state officials in at least five or six different states in which the election’s misconduct involved deprivation of constitutional rights for the president. For example, in one part of the state, you could fix a ballot, Democrat part. In other parts of the state, you couldn’t fix a ballot. In one part of the state, the ballots were examined. The other part of the state didn’t care if the ballots were examined. In Pennsylvania, 680,000 unexamined ballots virtually were put in secretly by Democrats alone. That’s outrageous. That is misconduct of the election.”
COVIDIOCRACY
On the Pandemic front, we have the former Chief Science Officer for Pfizer claiming that the “second wave” is a farce. The Video where he made these claims was promptly removed from most platforms but can still be seen here.
The opposition continues to push fear as per usual. Dr. Deborah Birx made some sinister statements during an appearance on “Face the Nation.” claiming Americans “may have made mistakes over the Thanksgiving time period” and urged everyone who attended holiday gatherings last week to assume they are infected with COVID-19 and to get tested this week.
Nobody can say for anyone else what the absolute truth is, we have to experience it for ourselves and come to our own conclusions.
In regards to things happening in “the world” or beyond the social-ecosystem we inhabit, we are forced to take the word of corporate “news” entities. We are forced to put a great deal of trust into these institutions that have routinely failed us. Criminal political enterprises with big-money backers use these outlets in a pay-to-play sort of fashion to manipulate the public consciousness. This has created a world where people believe what they see on TV more than their observable reality. If you are relying on your own ability to discern the truth then you might have noticed that bodies aren’t just piling up in the streets, most people might at least know somebody who had the “Vid” but in most cases, they survived.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, from the Stanford University School of Medicine recently shared that the survival rate for people under 70 years of age is about 99.95 percent. He also said that COVID is less dangerous than the flu for children. The survival rate from COVID-19 that he mentioned is based on approximately 50 studies that have been published providing seroprevalence data.
Trump Confidant: “They picked the wrong guy to try and bulldoze.”
Steve Mosher told John-Henry Weston, of LifeSite (as summarized here), that the coup plotters (AKA the deep state Dems) “picked the wrong guy to try and bulldoze.”
In an inspiring interview, Mosher further explained, “they’re not just trying to steal the election. They’re trying to steal our country…if they succeed in the massive election heist that’s currently underway, we’ll never have another free and fair election in this country, I’m afraid.” And he’s right.
Hope Nugget #1
As we’ve been sharing in this newsletter, hope comes from the effects of bravery. When you face a threat, peril, or chaotic situation, by virtue of the organizing power of your consciousness and mind, you bring order to it.
Millions of people in the US, and across the globe, are doing just this. They’re standing up and bravely accepting the fact that we live in a world with liars, cheaters, and fraudsters. The only way to stop them is to, first, bravely face the truth that they exist.
A room doesn’t get clean by ignoring it. We have to face a situation that is less than desirable so our motivational energy heightens for the purpose of addressing it. The fraud that’s being exposed is finally giving the people a dose of reality that when fully digested will make it very difficult for fraudsters like Biden et al to pull off another bogus election and further the deep state agenda. This, my friends, is extremely hopeful.
For far too long we’ve let the pickpockets of our world get a free pass, mainly because they’ve done such a good job of convincing us that there’s nothing we can do about it and that there’s nothing criminal actually happening. But all it takes is a lie to be seen once and it’s 1000 times harder to pull the wool over someone’s eyes in the future.
***
Mosher is telling those who have been brave enough to reject the lies of the mainstream media, that our country is undergoing a coup d’etat—an attempt by criminals to use force, fraud, and coercion to steal power for their own secretive and malevolent purposes. The good news is that most of the people in the Trump administration knew this was coming, as the Trump confidant shared with LifeSite.
“People in the White House know that Trump won, he said, because the numbers that came in on election night were massively in his favor. But the Democrats didn’t expect such a huge difference, so they had to shut down the counting and bring in phony ballots and switch votes electronically to make up the gap.”
“The other thing that’s probably hard for people to understand is, is how massive, how absolutely massive the fraud has been. It has encompassed every possible kind of the old school ballot fraud [but now] we have the 21st-century voter fraud. These computer voting systems…enable an entirely new way of cheating on the vote.”
The fraud is massive. So massive in fact, it’s hard for people to accept. This is actually part of the deep state’s modus operandi. And it’s a proven fact of psychology.
It works like this: you make your criminal activity so beyond what people can accept that even if they stumbled into a room full of evidence, they wouldn’t accept the proof before their eyes. In this sense, the things we’re seeing now in the realm of fraud exposure are likely only just a small taste of what’s to come.
You can’t accept a coup as massive and complex as this unless you’ve already grappled with its possibility first. Add in a healthy dose of social reinforcement via the mainstream media—like CNN et al saying anyone who believes Trump won and Biden stole the election in the biggest rigged vote in history is a nut job.
Hope Nugget #2
Despite this, thanks to Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Lin Wood, Sidney Powell, and scores of other truth-fighters—the idea that a massive fraud can take place at all isn’t so unbelievable anymore.
Thus we have two huge nuggets of hope to raise our spirits:
The people are finally accepting the fact criminal elements within almost every sector of society do indeed exist—and are being exposed.
The methods and plans of these dark actors (the deep state criminals) are also being exposed.
This is huge.
With these key steps in place, the roots of truth will continue to dig deep into the darkness of the earth. So long as we keep feeding the tree of knowledge that is growing, the barriers to freedom that were placed all around us—while we slept—will continue to breakdown.
The only thing that’s required for this freedom effort to work is that we continue to care about the truth and encourage our fellows to do the same.
Thankfully, Trump and the patriots for truth, freedom, and justice in this world are blazing a path for us to follow. And millions are right behind them each step of the way.
***
Here are a few more points from the Mosher interview.
“Why didn’t Hillary Clinton challenge the voting results in 2016?” he asked. “Because she knew that if she did, the voter fraud that they had attempted at that time would be revealed.”
Have you ever watched a magician perform an illusion on stage? Have you ever asked yourself why they use beautiful assistants?
The answer is misdirection.
Your mind is so good at spotting a falsehood, even one crumb of truth can ruin an extremely well-crafted illusion. And a lie or fraud works on the same principle.
We’ve been told from various sources that during the 2016 election, Clinton was pulling out all the stops to win. She threw Bernie under the bus. Sidney Powell said on NewsMax that Bernie went along with it—despite not wanting to—because maintaining the illusion of a free and fair election was more important.
Clinton had to concede because, as Mosher said, if she pursued the claim that Trump stole the election, the ensuing investigation would have revealed her role in the fraud.
Do you really think she would have given up so easily if she actually won the election fair and square? Not a chance!
Trump to Prove Election Fraud “I’m Going to Use 125% of My Energy to Do It”
Trump proved writ large that he is a spry and strong 74-year-old POTUS, doing multiple campaign events a day leading up to the November 3rd election day.
Trump told Maria Bartiromo, in his first major interview since the election, on Sunday Morning Futures in an extensive interview that he planned on exposing the massive fraud that took place, compiled in this report.
President Trump: “We got 74 million votes. He did not get anywhere near 80. And that’s 74 before they threw away. You know they threw away ballots. They threw away many Trump ballots. That’s the easiest way they could cheat. We got 74 million votes. He didn’t get anywhere near 80 million votes.
Maria Bartiromo: And you believe you will be able to prove this in the coming weeks.
President Trump: Well, I’m going to use 125% of my energy to do it. You need a judge that is willing to hear a case. You need a Supreme Court that is willing to make a really big decision.
The fraud has been exposed, en masse, over the past weeks. This isn’t going to stop.
The fact that the mainstream media refuses to mention any of it, ignoring the evidence, and falsely characterizing it as a baseless conspiracy theory speaks volumes.
Experts in spotting a liar, cheater, and a fraud, will tell you—if they want to get away with it, they have to avoid talking about the evidence.
Instead, they resort to ad hominem attacks (a defense made by attacking the person and their character to divert attention). This is what the media and those covering for the fraudsters have done ad nauseum for over three weeks.
Hope Nugget #3
As any investigator worth their salt will tell you, when you’re interrogating a perpetrator, and they resort to these tactics, it means you’re on the right track—it means you’ve effectively caught them in the act.
As frustrating as all this is, it’s necessary. The corruption of this world runs deep. It needs to be exposed slowly and carefully so people understand what their seeing, which is precisely what is happening.
It’s not just the people at Dominion—who helped rig the election by counting millions of illegal ballots for Biden and wiping out millions of legal Trump ballots.
It’s not just the people in the polling locations—who helped tally millions of illegal mail-in ballots that were mysteriously discovered after polling stations closed.
It’s not just the media—who went along with the fraud, and reported—falsely—that Biden won because the AP said so, knowing full well this was a flagrant violation of the constitutional process, and was a stone’s throw away from sedition and treason.
It’s not just the courts—who threw out cases brought forward by the Trump team et al, knowing full well that massive fraud and evidence thereof was at hand.
It’s not just the Congressmen and women—who were quick to accept the seditious AP declaration that Biden won the election.
It’s all these things and dozens of more arms of the swamp creature of fraud that are being exposed.
All of this is vitally necessary for We The People to see just how deep the corruption goes, aided by Trump and the team of patriots around and in support of him (which includes you by the way). Only when we finally come to terms with this will we be in a position to deal with at the root cause level.
And this, my friends, is something to be very hopeful for.
9 Reasons Why the 2020 Presidential Election Is Deeply Puzzling
We know just how hard it can be to talk to anyone about the fraud of the 2020 election.
Thankfully, a list of 9 reasons was compiled that should make things easier to share.
The following peculiarities also lack compelling explanations:
Late on election night, with Trump comfortably ahead, many swing states stopped counting ballots. In most cases, observers were removed from the counting facilities. Counting generally continued without the observers
Statistically, abnormal vote counts were the new normal when counting resumed. They were unusually large in size (hundreds of thousands) and had an unusually high (90 percent and above) Biden-to-Trump ratio
Late arriving ballots were counted. In Pennsylvania, 23,000 absentee ballots have impossible postal return dates and another 86,000 have such extraordinary return dates they raise serious questions
The failure to match signatures on mail-in ballots. The destruction of mail-in ballot envelopes, which must contain signatures
Historically low absentee ballot rejection rates despite the massive expansion of mail voting. Such is Biden’s narrow margin that, as political analyst Robert Barnes observes, ‘If the states simply imposed the same absentee ballot rejection rate as recent cycles, then Trump wins the election’
Missing votes. In Delaware County, Pennsylvania, 50,000 votes held on 47 USB cards are missing
Non-resident voters. Matt Braynard’s Voter Integrity Project estimates that 20,312 people who no longer met residency requirements cast ballots in Georgia. Biden’s margin is 12,670 votes
Serious ‘chain of custody’ breakdowns. Invalid residential addresses. Record numbers of dead people voting. Ballots in pristine condition without creases, that is, they had not been mailed in envelopes as required by law
Statistical anomalies. In Georgia, Biden overtook Trump with 89 percent of the votes counted. For the next 53 batches of votes counted, Biden led Trump by the same exact 50.05 to 49.95 percent margin in every single batch. It is particularly perplexing that all statistical anomalies and tabulation abnormalities were in Biden’s favor. Whether the cause was simple human error or nefarious activity, or a combination, clearly something peculiar happened.
Georgia to Wipe (Cover Up) Dominion Voting Machine Data
Keeping in line with the idea that attempts to cover up evidence is itself evidence of massive fraud, Georgia County Officials planned on wiping the Dominion voting machine data, as reported here.
But this was stopped, in what appears to be a clumsy process.
The District Court Judge of authority in the matter, after at first deciding not to let the wipe go through, then decided to reject the attempt on the part of the team exposing the fraud to place a “temporary restraining order to impound and preserve the voting machines in the State of Georgia, and to prevent any wiping of data.”
But in a third action, the judge then called off the data wipe.
All the orders can be found linked as dropbox files in this article.
Hope Nugget #4
The attempt to wipe the data at all is highly suspicious and should make anyone with sense question the story of the fraudsters.
After all, if there was no fraud, why not let investigators look at the voting machines?
The fact the data won’t be wiped, for now, gives us hope that the judicial system isn’t totally corrupt. And some proof of wrongdoing on the part of Dominion voting machines might emerge after all.
Video of Phone Call Recording to Chinese Manufacturer Requesting a Bulk Order of Fake US 2020 Ballots
Friday of last week, a video was released of what appears to be someone making a request for fake ballots.
This evidence, if it is accurate, proves that the fraud is not localized to the US—it’s global. It can be frightening to consider that this conspiracy and corruption is global in scale. But it is. The good news is that the Trump team knew what they were getting into, and they knew that the “plague from China” was already here.
Pardoned General Michael Flynn Declares: “We Have Clear, Clear Paths to Winning for This President!”
In his first interview since then, he let the world know Trump has a clear path to victory.
“We have clear, clear paths to winning for this president… If we don’t correct what is happening right now over the next couple of weeks then I hate to really think what will happen in our country going forward into the latter part of December and into the next month. I do not believe for a second that the country will accept Vice President Biden as the next president. “
Keep in mind, Flynn’s history in the military and DIA gives him keen insight into how a coup takes place—especially color revolutions like the deep state is attempting here in the US. If anyone is qualified to counter this coup, it’s Flynn. And it’s highly likely, as almost everyone in the know has been suggesting, that Trump knew this fraud was going to take place and planned to catch the fraudsters in the act.
Mysterious Monolith Found in Utah Desert Removed
Taking a break from election fraud news, as reported here, the Monolith that was found recently has gone missing. The object strongly resembled the one depicted in the Stanley Kubrick film 2001.
No one knows who put it there, where it came from, what its purpose was, or where it ended up.
But apparently, a piece of it was left behind.
Since the disappearance of the monolith, visitors have stacked rocks around the site where it once stood, along with a top piece that was left behind by whoever picked up the object.
Hope Nugget #7
The hope here might seem a bit obscure, but it’s actually in harmony with other elements of this week’s newsletter.
Psychologically, the human mind is a blend of animal and more than animal—which in the past was attributed to a spiritual endowment.
In short, it’s very easy for people to become close-minded and thereby blind themselves to the whole of reality because we tend to focus on the things we know, and dismiss the things we can’t understand quickly.
A mystery has the psychological power to awaken the inquisitive spirit.
Think about it this way.
The truth is the total storehouse of all real, valid, and true information. It’s a kind of well-nigh infinite library where everything that can be known exists. The problem is that the truth is so vast in comparison to human comprehension, our brains are designed to oversimplify it just so we can manage life. As a result, if we don’t get a healthy dose of mystery, the greatest treasures life has to offer are passed over unnoticed.
The Utah Monolith is so strange and weird, it’s acting like a grand mystery—not unlike the effects of entheogens such DMT or magic mushrooms, which have been proven to have powerful physical and psychological healing effects.
One of those effects is an ability to better accept the truth, and with it, gain strength.
Do you think there might be some truths with healing power that people are having a hard time with right now?
Gen Flynn Confirms: Key Evidence of Election Fraud was Seized on Servers in Frankfurt Germany
Several days after the election, rumors began to circulate that a raid took place in Germany wherein the Dominion voting machine data was routed overseas to manipulate election results.
Of course, the mainstream media et al was quick to dismiss these rumors as bogus. Despite this, Sidney Powell shared that her sources were telling her that the claims of a server raid were legitimate, and the good guys had the data.
General Flynn along with General McInerney shared in an interview with Brannon Howse of World View Report, that the server raid is real. You can watch the full interview on the at the WorldViewWeekend.com website.
Here are the transcribed portions from that interview, via Mike Adams of Natural News.
Brannon Howse: Let me just stop you there General because you just said something very interesting. You just said that who has just opened up the kraken, and then you just described what the kraken was. We all know the term because of a Sydney Powell using it, but you just said what it is. Can you back up on that?
General Mclnerney: Yes. Sidney got the term kraken. It was actually the nickname of the 305th military intelligence battalion, and that has been her source along with other sources that Mary and I know about, but we don’t want to talk about. We’re getting the different sources that are relaying this, but the important thing is they identified, now get this, they identified China, Iran and Russia as being involved in this and manipulating the vote.
In addition, the US special forces command seized a server farm in Frankfurt, Germany, because they were sending this data from those six states through the internet to Spain and then into Frankfurt, Germany. Special operation forces seize those that facility so they have those servers and they know all this data they are providing.
Brannon Howse: Did that go down without incident? did that seizure go down without incident?
General Mclnerney: Well, I’ve heard it didn’t go down without incident, and I haven’t been able to verify it. I want to be careful in that. It’s just coming out, but I understand my initial report is that there were US soldiers killed in that operation. Now, that was a CIA operation, and so that’s the very worrisome thing. Did that occur because of what Mary and I and Allen were notifying on the Sunday and the Monday in different networks that this was going to happen, that they were using hammer and scorecard, and so they decided to bounce it overseas, so the server farms and the hammer and scorecard we’re using in the continental United States, couldn’t be used? I don’t know that. In any case, it makes it more vulnerable because when you start moving that kind of data overseas, other people look at it,
Brannon Howse: But you are saying that was a CIA facility, and that was where the server was taken from by these special forces, was a CIA facility in Germany.
General Mclnerney: That’s correct. Frankfurt, Germany. We have all this information, General Flynn of course, people most realized, was the senior military intelligence officer in the US commands as a defense intelligence agency. He’s a career intelligence officer, knows this stuff, backwards and forwards. From my experience in the cloud business, this was a trivial operation, relatively speaking, but the magnitude, because so many people Brannon were involved. So many people like General Flynn mentioned, the democratic person saw this are coming forward, but what we are doing, we are competing with the constitution and the 14th December date for the electoral college. Why? Because we have this information and we know that not only did we have the deep state and the executive that President Trump had to fight, we also had it in the legislature where you have Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, Schumer, all of those people were involved in this. They were involved in the Russian hoax. They were involved in this coup d’état, but we also had the judiciary, Judge Sullivan, who was General Flynn’s judge, outdid himself on this. You had the compromise there, and that’s why the 305th, the krakens were targeted and selected, I believe, because the President could trust them. That’s why Chris Miller, who is now the acting secretary of defense and a former special operations hero. That’s why Chris Miller is the secretary of defense.
…
General Mclnerney: That is exactly what you heard me say Brannon. The president has in his oath to the constitution to defend the country against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and we shouldn’t let a schedule that we know is so blatantly flawed that anybody can understand that with just the items I’ve given our listeners tonight. When you have hundreds of thousands of votes that were falsified, and we know they’re falsified. I believe those servers are going to show that, and I believe that he is going to show that. It’ll probably have to be done at the Supreme Court because you have judges like some of it in that that are going to try to protect themselves because the fingers are going to start pointing to everybody. “Well, I didn’t know this, I didn’t know that”, they’re going to use the Nuremberg trial.
The hope here is pretty obvious. If Flynn is a credible source, which he appears to be then his confirmation about the server data is likely true. And this means some of the most explosive evidence about election fraud might be on the way.
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If you feel this newsletter was helpful in understanding the current situation then please share far and wide as the big tech platforms and the mainstream media echo-chamber has no desire to report anything beyond what benefits them and the financial elite.
The Hope we crave is all around us if we only dare to embrace the truth with a whole heart and discerning mind.
We are now 3 weeks deep into the 2020 post-election saga and there seems to be no end in sight. We have plenty of interesting information coming out regarding several Voting Software companies, their questionable origins, and the suspicious connections they have to certain politicians and Foundations. Alongside this, we have several stories to inspire you and give a taste of some huge changes to come.
Weekly Report #3 (The week of November 16th to 23rd 2020)
The fun doesn’t stop there, we’re seeing States continually flip-flopping, recounts being announced or denied, GOP caving to intimidation tactics, and election fraud lawsuits won at the local level being overturned at the state level.
It can be disheartening, especially to those hoping for instant gratification, but there is a silver lining: The Supreme Court.
It is very likely that the goal all along was for this mess to end up landing in the SCOTUS, all the while President Trump’s legal team is collecting evidence and building a case as things pass through the potentially corrupt lower courts. It’s pretty wild timing that this would all fall on the heels of the Amy Coney Barret confirmation.
Powell Doesn’t Work For Trump… Why This Isn’t Bad
(Justin Deschamps)
Let’s open this week’s report with some hope about a situation that is worrying a lot of people: The announcement that Sidney Powell isn’t working directly for the Trump legal team.
As you might imagine, the deep state leftist media is blowing this way out of proportion, claiming that Powell is effectively a “conspiracy nutjob” and she has nothing to back her claims. The fact there is a lot of evidence already on the table is something the mainstream media (e.g. Tucker Carlson et al) is completely ignoring. But that’s not the point of this segment.
The point is that Powell not working for the Trump legal team is actually a good thing.
As someone who’s been studying the law for over 8 years, I can tell you that massive gaping holes of comprehension and understanding are at work at almost all levels of our society—the media is no exception. More to the point, the media is capitalizing on the fact most people don’t understand the legal process or how a strategy is needed to deal with lawfare tactics on the part of a corrupt system.
Without going into a detailed analysis, the key points are summarized quite well by a user of Voat in this post. I bolded the points that are the ones we should focus on.
For all you nancy boys getting your panties in a twist over the tweet about Sidney, I wrote this in a shill’s thread so it probably won’t get read. I’ll make a new thread for anyone who wants to discuss it in one spot.
This is my summary:
TLDR: This is not a big deal.
(1) In any civil lawsuit, there must be parties to the lawsuit, and they are called “parties in interest.” This means they have to have an interest in the lawsuit. The Plaintiff(s) must allege that a duty was breached by the Defendant(s). The Defendant(s) have to be served legal notice. This is what constitutes a “case” in court.
(2) The Plaintiff(s) must have “standing” (legal right) to sue. Since I do not live in Georgia, I could not file a case in Georgia regarding voter fraud or election fraud because I would not have standing. But someone in Georgia could. That is what Lin Wood did. He lives in Georgia. He is in the process of appealing the lower court’s ruling against him.
(3) Trump has legal standing because, even though he does not live in Georgia, he was a candidate on the ballot there, and if there was election fraud that cost him votes, he has standing to sue.
(4) Trump’s legal team represents HIM in court, regarding any case having to do with the election for which he was on the ballot.
(5) There are also OTHER parties who might bring lawsuits (in Georgia and elsewhere) that were NOT candidates on the ballot, but they DO live in Georgia and have been wronged in some way.
(6) These other people are likely who Powell will be representing. She can still coordinate with Trump’s legal team, even if she is not officially part of that team.
(7) It would be a good idea, given the circumstances, for Trump’s legal team to make a public statement that Powell is not officially part of their team, and any statements she makes are not part of their cases on behalf of Trump. That way, the opposition (or corrupt judges) can’t bring Powell’s statements into their cases. Powell is likely to be attacking from a different direction than Trump’s team.
In summary, Powell, as she stated yesterday, is representing We The People—a defender of the Republic, the rule of law, and the people of the US‚ and the world, by extension of her actions to protect the rule of law. Since everyone who voted has had their legal right to do so threatened, she is acting on behalf of the American people who voted.
Powell is likely going to represent voters in the jurisdictions where the fraud took place—which is the entire US—hence her suits are going to be federally filed, as she stated last week.
Just because she doesn’t work directly for the Trump campaign doesn’t mean her lawsuits and any evidence gathered by her has no validity. Quite the contrary. As an attorney with a license to litigate cases federally, the lawsuits she files are just as powerful as one filed by Rudy Guiliani, who is working for the Trump campaign.
Most importantly, as the Voat poster suggests, the corrupt judges might try to strike evidence from the record in a suit on some technicality, but the fact that Powell not working for them has been given on the public record (via the Guiliani and the Trump team) means that a clear distinction has been made.
All and all, the hope here is several-fold.
Trump is fighting the election fraud directly through his legal team, Guiliani et al.
The electoral process itself, the rule of law, and We The People (the electorate) are being represented by Sidney Powell.
The fraud that Powell and others are exposing has global ramifications because the same tactics are used in elections all over the world.
The media’s failure to report on the evidence that already exists, while misrepresenting the Guiliani statement about Powell not working for the Trump team is costing them even more credibility than they’ve already lost. Anytime a liar is exposed, this is a good thing. Arguably the biggest lairs in the game right now are the mainstream media.
In short, don’t believe the armchair skeptics and commenters who don’t know how to navigate the complexities of a legal process or give the efforts of Trump and the team around him credit where credit is due.
These things take time. Patience is key. And there’s plenty to be hopeful for.
In line with the above notion that the Trump plan to deal with election fraud is moving as expected, the following news broke last week.
The appeals process for circuit courts was changed last week, where 4 arguably pro-Trump SCOTUS judges were assigned to key areas currently being disputed by the Trump campaign. The hope here is that when appeals are made in suits that were dismissed related to alleged election fraud, judges loyal to the rule of law and the constitution will be on the bench. And that’s good news.
(Ryan Delarme)
Currently, in the key remaining states, the deep-state actors are “certifying” their own fraud. Let’s take a look at how the situation is progressing in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin
A federal lawsuit that had drawn nation-wide attention was dismissed on the 16th. The suit was filed by 3 voters, seeking to exclude 3 counties and nearly 800,000 votes that ended up swinging the count in favor of Biden (the same tactic we saw happen in Michigan).
Oddly enough, the plaintiffs requested the suit be dismissed on the 16th without giving any further comments. Court filings didn’t give a concrete reason why Michael Langenhorst, Michael LeMay, and Stephen Fifrick made the decision to dismiss the case, their attorneys were unwilling to divulge that information citing attorney-client privilege.
The campaign is set to request a recount after the final margin fell within the 1 percent margin required for an aggrieved candidate to request a recount. A recount of unofficial results in the state of Wisconsin would cost President Donald Trump $7.9 million upfront, the Wisconsin Elections Commission said Monday. Meagan Wolfe, Wisconsin’s chief elections official, says that the estimated cost of a statewide recount will be $7.9 million. The cost estimate was based on costs submitted by the state’s 72 counties. The last time a recount was conducted in Wisconsin, in 2016, it cost $2 million. Wolfe said the higher cost is due to conducting a recount during the pandemic.
If you’ve been paying attention to the election fiasco you’ve at least heard about Dominion Voting Systems and their possible bias toward the Democrats this election cycle. There is also intrigue concerning a company called Scytl, a Spanish provider of electronic voting systems and election technology, including allegations about a recent “raid” by the US Military on its servers in Germany. It’s apparent that something happened, the military was used but at whose behest? Were the Trump-friendly patriots trying to retrieve evidence or was it a deep-state attempt to cover something up?
Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas recently appeared on Newsmax to explain as much as he can about what was going on:
Incidentally, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital has invested $40 million in Scytl. In addition to the raid on Scytl, Dominion Voting Systems connections are also being called into question after news broke about a former staffer of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) being hired as a lobbyist for the company. The connections don’t end there, the company also has ties to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and the Clinton Foundation. Perhaps it’s all circumstantial, but at the very least it’s a severe conflict of interest that merits investigation.
Last week, the Colorado-based Dominion made a statement refuting any ties to another multinational voting systems corporation “Smartmatic” while admitting that the two firms worked together in the Philippines and said it bought some assets from Smartmatic-linked Sequoia about 10 years ago. The firm confirmed that it made a donation during a Clinton Global Initiative meeting in 2014, but it asserted that it has “no company ownership relationships with any member of the Pelosi family, the Feinstein family, or the Clinton Global Initiative, Smartmatic, Scytl, or any ties to Venezuela.”
The Associated Press could very well be covering or misdirecting public awareness, but even AP noted that former Pelosi Chief of Staff Nadeam Elshami “is part of a lobbying team representing Dominion, according to public disclosures,” adding that the team “includes Brian Wild, who counts Republicans such as former House Speaker John Boehner and former Vice President Dick Cheney among his past bosses.”
UPDATE – On Saturday night Newsmax White House correspondent Emerald Robinson tweeted this out:
It appears that Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren, both Democratic senators, wrote letters in December of 2019 where they critiqued the integrity of election tech vendors, and questioned the reliability of their products, SPECIFICALLY mentioning DOMINION. This of course is proof of their unfairness, if they truly cared about the people over themselves they would join the chorus of individuals currently raising awareness.
This flip-floppy behavior isn’t exclusive to politicians. John Oliver, host of the TV talk show “Last Week Tonight”, has also expressed deep concerns about the integrity of the election process in November of 2019, ironically agreeing with his biggest target; US President Donald Trump, about election integrity and voting machine vulnerabilities. During the segment, Oliver had Rachel Tobac, the CEO of a cybersecurity company, Show his viewers how easily she could get unauthorized access to a voting machine on camera in less than two short minutes. Now that the spotlight is on Biden, John Oliver doesn’t seem to have anything further to say on the subject.
Sidney Powell has been making the rounds, appearing on-air and giving statements daily. She was set to appear on Tucker Carlson this week but after a phone call between them she decided not to go through with it. When later questioned during an appearance on Mornings with Maria Powell claimed that Tucker was “very insulting, demanding, and rude”.
In response to Powell, Carlson made a statement on his show Thursday evening saying that:
“We have no intention of fighting with her, We’ve always respected her work. We simply wanted to see the details. … We invited Sidney Powell on this show. We would’ve given her the whole hour; we would’ve given her the entire week actually and listened quietly the whole time at rapt attention — that’s a big story. But she never sent us any evidence despite a lot of requests, polite requests, not a page. When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her.”
This is contrary to Powell’s statement, claiming that she had offered him access to a witness and an unfiled affidavit. Apparently that wasn’t enough for Tucker, who put forth the claim that Powell “could not provide evidence of claims”. Her response:
“I didn’t get angry with the request to provide evidence, In fact, I sent an affidavit to Tucker that I had not even attached to a pleading yet to help him understand the situation, and I offered him another witness who could explain the mathematics and statistical evidence far better than I can. I’m not really a numbers person. But he was very insulting, demanding, and rude and I told him not to contact me again in those terms.”
Naturally, there’s all kinds of speculation being flung around regarding the falling out, but no one knows for sure the full-picture view and the circumstances that created this situation. Could it all be optics? Was Tucker being intimidated or pressured to act a certain way? We know that Soros has money in everything, and Fox News is no exception. Here’s an excerpt of a piece from Breitbart:
Under the guise of seeking to “prevent a constitutional crisis,” a massive network of well funded left-wing activists and progressive groups are training, organizing, and planning to mobilize millions of Americans should President Trump “contest the election results,” refuse to concede, or claim an early victory.
More than 80 advocacy groups and grassroots organizations have joined in a broad coalition calling itself “Protect the Results” and proclaiming that “we cannot ignore the threat that Trump poses to our democracy and a peaceful transition of power.”
…
Both founding groups of the coalition (Indivisible and Stand up America) are part of the Soros-funded Democracy Alliance (DA), the largest network of donors dedicated to building the progressive movement in the U.S.
DA’s large body of donors aggregates resources for “focused investment,” marshalling as much as $80 million per year.
In 2017, DA developed a “resistance map” — a mix of anti-Trump groups it recommends its members donate to, many of which are now part of Protect the Results.
Other Soros-funded coalition groups include MoveOn, Women’s March, the Working Families Party and the Center for Popular Democracy, a network with over 50 local partners in 32 states, among many others.
This explains why Newt Gingrich was shut down after even mentioning his name on live television.
This is one of the weirdest exchanges I’ve ever seen on TV. @newtgingrich correctly points out that George Soros threw an unprecedented amount of money into DA races all over the country to elect radicals and Fox News basically told him to shut up. WTF? pic.twitter.com/IxwcLG2gOH
Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who made headlines in 2017 for leaking intelligence that bolstered President Trump’s claims that Obama had him wiretapped, has been promoted to a top Defense Department post in the aftermath of Trump’s firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper. It is worth noting that Ezra was formerly a National Security Aide to General Michael Flynn prior to being ousted. Take from that what you will.
If you had any doubt about "The Plan" or what's happening just watch this clip from the Department of Defense press conference earlier today and put those doubts to rest once and for all. Listen very carefully to Ezra Cohen-Watnick and who he mentions and the mission he's on. pic.twitter.com/U0MvhGcoCo
A few days ago, we reported on the Huntington Beach California protests against Governor Gavin Newsom’s totally unnecessary curfew for the state.
The protest was set to begin in a minute after the curfew was set to begin, intended as a form of civil disobedience.
There is now a second one of these “curfew breakers” events planned in San Clemente tonight. A reminder, L.A. County’s curfew went into effect last night. The state’s starts tonight at 10pm. https://t.co/7OXzzA3fDW
Unlike protests earlier this year for George Floyd and Briana Taylor—that were violent and resulted in looting—no mass violence of lawlessness took place.
Protestors were playing music, displayed American flags, and—for the most part—moved out of the way of traffic.
Crowds in Huntington Beach are being described as French Laundy-esque.
But as we saw earlier this year, protests are a defacto way to avoid outrage for ignoring mask orders and social distancing commands—at least when it comes to Black Lives Matter.
Still going strong here in Huntington Beach, CA protesting Newsom’s “curfew.” 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/raCzuQkqNY
Lin Wood Says Evidence of Satanism and Pedophilia Will Be Exposed
(Jim Hoft) Attorney L. Lin Wood held an interview this morning with “The Thrive Time” Show hosts Clay Clark and Dr. Robert Zoellner and boy did he NOT hold back!
Ask yourself this, how are we supposed to solve a problem no one knows about? In the realm of justice, it’s only what’s considered to be true that matters.
The Truth exists independent of human perception.
A truth (a fact) is a representation of The Truth recorded in the minds of human beings.
A fact is informed by The Truth, but only facts (things we accept as truth) effect us subjectively.
— JustinStillness Deschamps Gab @Stillnessinthestorm (@JustnStillness) November 23, 2020
The legal world operates in the realm of "fictions"—facts that represent reality, but are not reality itself.
Insofar as being (thought, emotion, and resulting action) only facts matter—which can obviously be inaccurate.
Facts are the "code" of the matrix of human life.
— JustinStillness Deschamps Gab @Stillnessinthestorm (@JustnStillness) November 23, 2020
Wood also had some hopeful statements to make over the weekend.
I shared some comments to go along with what he said:
Do you really think the man who said elections were rigged in 2016 didn’t prepare for 2020?
There’s a lot of doubt about whether Trump will retake the Whitehouse.
Keep in mind he had the largest voter turnout for an election in US history—even if we assume that none of the results weren’t manipulated by the deep state—which we unquestionably know they were.
Attorney Lin Wood, advisor to Trump’s legal team that’s fighting for the constitution and the legal process of the US election reminds us of something we should not forget.
Trump’s had some of the greatest minds supporting him over the past 4 years.
While it might seem like everything is lost, keep in mind, a conman’s greatest trick is to make you believe in his lie.
They’ll pound it into your head. They’ll make everyone echo it. They’ll make you think you’re crazy for believing the truth. But the truth doesn’t stop being true just because a bunch of people gave up on it.
Hope only dies when we refuse to accept the truth.
— JustinStillness Deschamps Gab @Stillnessinthestorm (@JustnStillness) November 20, 2020
Do you really think that one of the greatest negotiating minds in history, who managed to broker peace deals across the globe, beat the Clinton corruption machine in 2016, defeat a bogus impeachment, defeat the China virus with minimal death and destruction, and restore the economy, twice, didn’t see this coming?
Do you really think the man who is known for being a 5D chess master didn't see the 2020 Election Fraud coming?
— JustinStillness Deschamps Gab @Stillnessinthestorm (@JustnStillness) November 21, 2020
The “biblical” nature of what we’re seeing unfold right now is no accident. The “money changers” have to be seen for what they are before the people stop going to them to get their coins exchanged.
There are several major developments happening that I’m extremely excited to talk about. But these changes won’t mean much to most people because there’s a major conceptual language barrier in place. In an effort to address that barrier consider the following.
There's a secret about Christ that has been hidden for almost 2000 years—it has been used to enslave humanity.
Information is about to be released that will reveal this secret, and the world will never be the same—but only if we can dare to accept the truth it has to offer.
— JustinStillness Deschamps Gab @Stillnessinthestorm (@JustnStillness) November 23, 2020
What does this mean?
Read this and think carefully. I’ll have more to reveal soon.
As long as you can detach from the mainstream narrative, there is plenty of hope to be had.
Trump’s legal team (Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn included) have been spotted in public recently and they do not appear to be under stress.
Trump attorney Jenna Ellis posted this late-night photo of herself with former Mayor of New York City and lead Trump elections attorney Rudy Giuliani and Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn (US Army Ret.) who was President Trump’s first national security advisor.
One can’t help but wonder what a non-attorney like Flynn is doing hanging out with the President’s election attorneys so late at night. Perhaps he stopped by to give a morale boost.
Or perhaps the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Obama and former Trump national security advisor is lending his expertise in national security and intelligence to Trump’s legal team? Nothing can stop what is coming.
The next day President Trump’s legal team held a press conference outlining their case. Guiliani claimed that there was a pattern to the irregularities, suggesting a “plan from a centralized place” to commit voter fraud in certain democrat cities. We’ve reported on so many instances of voter fraud that it’s been practically impossible to keep track of them all, luckily at the press conference the team listed the key allegations that will fuel the case:
Observers were allegedly prevented from watching mail-in ballots being opened. Giuliani said that many mail-in ballots were opened without observers being able to check that they were properly signed, a key protection against fraud. Those votes, he said, were “null and void,” especially where the envelopes had been discarded, making recounts useless.
Allegedly unequal application of the law in Democratic counties. In Pennsylvania, whose state supreme court created new, relaxed voting rules before the election, Giuliani alleged that absentee voters in Democratic counties were allowed to “cure” defects in their ballots, while voters in Republican counties, which obeyed the state law as written, were not.
Voters allegedly arrived at the polls to discover other people had voted for them. Giuliani said that many provisional ballots cast in Pittsburgh were submitted by people who showed up to vote in person, only to be told that they had voted already. He alleged that Democrats had filled out absentee ballots for other people, hoping they would not show up.
Election officials were allegedly told not to look for defects in ballots, and to backdate ballots. Giuliani cited an affidavit from an official who swore she was told not to exclude absentee ballots for defects, and to backdate ballots so they would not appear to have been received after Election Day, to avoid a Supreme Court order to sequester those ballots.
Ballots casting votes for Joe Biden and no other candidates were allegedly run several times through machines. Giuliani said that there were 60 witnesses in Michigan who would attest to ballots being “produced” quickly and counted twice or thrice. He said that a minimum of 60,000 ballots, and a maximum of 100,000 ballots, were allegedly affected.
Absentee ballots were accepted in Wisconsin without being applied for first. Giuliani noted that Wisconsin state law was stricter regarding absentee ballots than most other states are, yet alleged that 60,000 absentee ballots were counted in the Milwaukee area, and 40,000 in the Madison area, without having been applied for properly by the voters who cast them.
There were alleged “overvotes,” with some precincts allegedly recording more voters than residents, among other problems. Giuliani said there was an unusually large number of overvotes in precincts in Michigan and in Wisconsin, which he alleged was the reason that Republicans on the Wayne County Board of Canvassers had refused to certify the results there this week. He also alleged that there were some out-of-state voters in Georgia, and people who had cast votes twice there.
Voting machines and software are allegedly owned by companies with ties to the Venezuelan regime and to left-wing donor George Soros. Sidney Powell argued that U.S. votes were being counted overseas and that Dominion voting machines and Smartmatic software were controlled by foreign interests, manipulating algorithms to change the results. Powell noted specifically that Smartmatic’s owners included two Venezuelan nationals, whom she alleged had ties to the regime of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. The legal team alleged that there were statistical anomalies, such as huge batches of votes for Biden, that could not be explained except as manipulation — which, they alleged, happened in the wee hours of the morning as vote-counting had stalled. (The companies have disputed these allegations vigorously.)
The Constitution provides a process for electing a president if the vote is corrupted. Jenna Ellis argued that the media had usurped the power to declare the winner of the election. She made the point, citing Federalist No. 68, that the constitutional process of selecting a president had procedural safeguards against corruption and foreign influence.
A quick youtube search will turn up a boatload of videos filled with manipulative slant, bad comedians using what feels like the tactics of a typical middle-school bully, well-groomed corporate pundits making fun of Giuliani and his hair dye instead of unpacking his claims. One of the few places you can watch the press conference is provided below.
This gruesome, trainwreck of an election isn’t the only battle being fought, perhaps the most important (but little-reported on) point of concern is the “Great Economic Reset”. The reset is something that alt-financial analysts and conspiracy theorists have been talking about for years, and it seems inevitable. What is still undecided though, is who will be in control of this reset. Will it be the usual handful of Globalists or a transnational union of patriots from all nations? It’s impossible to say though it appears the Central Bank’s opposition is using this transformative moment in time as an opportunity to wrestle control from the establishment.
The Deep-State affiliated world leaders are touting the Great Reset as expected, and the COVID crisis seems to be the perfect way to condition the people to become accepting through fear, propaganda, and neuro-linguistic programming (“the new normal”). It probably appears to be set in stone for those who still trust Big-Tech and the Mainstream Media, but many believe Trump and company have been planning and plotting all along. Evidence of this includes the absorption of the Federal Reserve into the United States Treasury to produce stimulus, helping out Mainstreet instead of wall street. Essentially, instead of simply dismantling it all he’s using the CB’s magic money printing wand and the illusionary economic system to transition into a new system that would be the antithesis of what the Deep-State is trying to bring about with its Great Reset. In response to Trump’s maneuverings, they’ve been very actively trying to bring down the economy, but he counters them every time with their own weapons. The Deep-State players attack the economy, Trump uses the Fed to pump money back into it. The corporate media parrots have been singing about another great depression every few weeks yet it never comes. Why is that? Because the Patriots are in control.
If you feel this newsletter was helpful in understanding the current situation then please share far and wide as the big tech platforms and the mainstream media echo-chamber has no desire to report anything beyond what benefits them and the financial elite.
Hope is all around us if we dare to embrace the truth with a whole heart and discerning mind.
Aspects of U.S. Attorney John Huber’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation have been assumed by U.S. Attorney John Durham as part of his review into the origins of the Russia probe, Fox News has learned.
A source familiar with Durham’s investigation told Fox News on Thursday that parts of what Huber was investigating in 2017 — involving the Clinton Foundation — have been incorporated in Durham’s investigation.
In November 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed Huber, the U.S. attorney for Utah, and other senior prosecutors to evaluate “certain issues” involving the sale of Uranium One, and other dealings related to the Clinton Foundation. Sessions tapped Huber after requests by congressional Republicans, who had been calling for the appointment of a special counsel to review the matters.
Sessions revealed that he asked U.S. Attorney John Huber, seen here, to look into the accusations.
Huber was also tasked with reviewing the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email probe, including allegations that the Justice Department and FBI “policies or procedures” were not followed.
It has been unclear, for years, the status of Huber’s investigation, but another source told Fox News Thursday that Huber has faced mounting criticism from the Justice Department and White House over his progress.
“There are folks that are aware of the fact that Huber has not done much, and there has been criticism at the Justice Department and the White House,” the source said. “Folks that have been concerned about what he did or didn’t do, and many of them feel that Huber did not dig deep enough or work hard enough.”
The source added that many are “very concerned about why there hadn’t been more done.”
The New York Times on Thursday first reported that Durham has focused attention on the Clintons, and said that Durham has sought documents and interviews about how federal law enforcement officials handled an investigation into allegations of political corruption at the Clinton Foundation.
Durham was appointed by Attorney General Barr last year to investigate the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe shortly after Mueller completed his yearslong investigation into whether the campaign colluded with the Russians to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Durham’s timeline has been focused on July 2016, when the FBI’s original Russia probe began, through the appointment of Mueller in May 2017.
Durham’s investigation has been slowed by the coronavirus pandemic, but that has not blunted the level of anticipation from President Trump, his Republican allies on Capitol Hill and his supporters, some of whom have called for findings to be released before November’s presidential election.Video
Speculation over the status of Durham’s review into the origins of the Russia probe has only intensified amid the resignation of a top aide earlier this month, Norah Dannehy, and comments from congressional Republicans suggesting developments could soon be announced.
Dannehy, a top aide to Durham, resigned Friday, after working closely with the U.S. attorney for Connecticut for years. Durham’s office confirmed her departure but did not elaborate on the backstory.
Earlier this month, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., hinted that developments in Durham’s investigation were on the horizon. This was after newly released Justice Department records showed numerous phones belonging to members of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team were wiped of information because of forgotten passcodes, irreparable screen damage, loss of the device, intentional deletion or other reasons—all before the Justice Department inspector general’s office could review the devices.
“You think you are mad about the phones being wiped?” Graham said on Fox News’ “Hannity” last week. “Stay tuned.”
He added: “We’ll talk in about 10 or 12 days and we’ll see if there is something else you can get mad about.”
The investigation has produced one criminal charge so far, against former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who was accused of altering an email related to the surveillance of a former Trump campaign aide. But that prosecution did not allege a broader conspiracy within the FBI, and the conduct it involved had largely been laid out in a Justice Department inspector general report from last December.
It is not clear if Durham will be able to conclude his work before the election, though Barr has not ruled out the possibility of additional criminal charges.
Barr, during an interview with NBC News last week, said that there “could be” more charges stemming from Durham’s review.
“Yeah, there could be,” Barr said while declining to say whether any such charges would be announced prior to Election Day.
In July, though, Fox News reported that Durham could wait to reveal his findings or initiate further prosecutions until after the 2020 presidential election.
Two sources familiar with Durham’s investigation told Fox News at the time that Durham was working expeditiously to try to finish the probe before Labor Day — which he did not — but that several lines of the investigation had not yet been completed.
“He believes it’s critical to do them,” one source said at the time. “He is feeling more pressure to get this done and wrapped up.”
The source also told Fox News that Durham “does not want this to be viewed political,” and the closer it gets to November, Durham could “punt it to after the election.”
“No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end.”—George Orwell
You can map the nearly 20-year journey from the 9/11 attacks to the COVID-19 pandemic by the freedoms we’ve lost along the way.
The road we have been traveling has been littered with the wreckage of our once-vaunted liberties, especially those enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.
The assaults on our freedoms that began with the post-9/11 passage of the USA Patriot Act laid the groundwork for the eradication of every vital constitutional safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.
The COVID-19 pandemic with its lockdowns, mask mandates, surveillance, snitch lines for Americans to report their fellow citizens for engaging in risky behavior, and veiled threats of forced vaccinations has merely provided the architects of the American police state with an opportunity to flex their muscles.
These have become mile markers on the road to tyranny.
Free speech, the right to protest, the right to challenge government wrongdoing, due process, a presumption of innocence, the right to self-defense, accountability and transparency in government, privacy, press, sovereignty, assembly, bodily integrity, representative government: all of these and more have become casualties in the government’s ongoing war on the American people. In the process, the American people have been treated like enemy combatants, to be spied on, tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, locked up, denied due process, and killed.
What the past 20 years have proven is that the U.S. government poses a greater threat to our individual and collective freedoms and national security than any terrorist, foreign threat or pandemic.
In allowing ourselves to be distracted by terror drills, foreign wars, color-coded warnings, partisan politics, pandemic scares, and other carefully constructed exercises in propaganda, sleight of hand, and obfuscation, we failed to recognize that the U.S. government—the government that was supposed to be a “government of the people, by the people, for the people”—has become the enemy of the people.
Indeed, the U.S. government has grown so corrupt, greedy, power-hungry and tyrannical over the course of the past 240-plus years that our constitutional republic has since given way to an idiocracy, and representative government has given way to a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).
Although the Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments to the Constitution—was adopted as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, in America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.
“We the people” have been terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a government that cares nothing for our lives or our liberties.
The bogeyman’s names and faces have changed over time (terrorism, the war on drugs, illegal immigration, a viral pandemic), but the end result remains the same: in the so-called name of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.
What we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago. Sadly, most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights.
Here is what it means to live under the Constitution, post-9/11 and in the midst of a COVID-19 pandemic.
The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak your mind, assemble and protest nonviolently without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. In other words, Americans should not be silenced by the government. To the founders, all of America was a free speech zone.
Despite the clear protections found in the First Amendment, the freedoms described therein are under constant assault. Increasingly, Americans are being arrested and charged with bogus “contempt of cop” charges such as “disrupting the peace” or “resisting arrest” for daring to film police officers engaged in harassment or abusive practices. Journalists are being prosecuted for reporting on whistleblowers. States are passing legislation to muzzle reporting on cruel and abusive corporate practices. Religious ministries are being fined for attempting to feed and house the homeless. Protesters are being tear-gassed, beaten, arrested and forced into “free speech zones.” And under the guise of “government speech,” the courts have reasoned that the government can discriminate freely against any First Amendment activity that takes place within a government forum.
The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Essentially, this amendment was intended to give the citizenry the means to resist tyrannical government. Yet while gun ownership has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as an individual citizen right, Americans remain powerless to defend themselves against SWAT team raids and government agents armed to the teeth with military weapons better suited to the battlefield. As such, this amendment has been rendered null and void.
The Third Amendment reinforces the principle that civilian-elected officials are superior to the military by prohibiting the military from entering any citizen’s home without “the consent of the owner.” With the police increasingly training like the military, acting like the military, and posing as military forces—complete with heavily armed SWAT teams, military weapons, assault vehicles, etc.—it is clear that we now have what the founders feared most—a standing army on American soil.
The Fourth Amendment prohibits government agents from conducting surveillance on you or touching you or invading you, unless they have some evidence that you’re up to something criminal. In other words, the Fourth Amendment ensures privacy and bodily integrity. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has suffered the greatest damage in recent years and has been all but eviscerated by an unwarranted expansion of police powers that include strip searches and even anal and vaginal searches of citizens, surveillance (corporate and otherwise) and intrusions justified in the name of fighting terrorism, as well as the outsourcing of otherwise illegal activities to private contractors.
The Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment work in tandem. These amendments supposedly ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without the right to an attorney and a fair trial before a civilian judge. However, in the new suspect society in which we live, where surveillance is the norm, these fundamental principles have been upended. Certainly, if the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.
The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. Yet when the populace has no idea of what’s in the Constitution—civic education has virtually disappeared from most school curriculums—that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury incapable of distinguishing justice and the law from their own preconceived notions and fears. However, as a growing number of citizens are coming to realize, the power of the jury to nullify the government’s actions—and thereby help balance the scales of justice—is not to be underestimated. Jury nullification reminds the government that “we the people” retain the power to ultimately determine what laws are just.
The Eighth Amendment is similar to the Sixth in that it is supposed to protect the rights of the accused and forbid the use of cruel and unusual punishment. However, the Supreme Court’s determination that what constitutes “cruel and unusual” should be dependent on the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” leaves us with little protection in the face of a society lacking in morals altogether.
The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. Popular sovereignty—the belief that the power to govern flows upward from the people rather than downward from the rulers—is clearly evident in this amendment. However, it has since been turned on its head by a centralized federal government that sees itself as supreme and which continues to pass more and more laws that restrict our freedoms under the pretext that it has an “important government interest” in doing so.
As for the Tenth Amendment’s reminder that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution, that assurance of a system of government in which power is divided among local, state and national entities has long since been rendered moot by the centralized Washington, DC, power elite—the president, Congress and the courts.
If there is any sense to be made from this recitation of freedoms lost, it is simply this: our individual freedoms have been eviscerated so that the government’s powers could be expanded.
Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to the Deep State—the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that has set itself beyond the reach of the law and is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.
This is a government that, in conjunction with its corporate partners, views the citizenry as consumers and bits of data to be bought, sold and traded.
This is a government that is laying the groundwork to weaponize the public’s biomedical data as a convenient means by which to penalize certain “unacceptable” social behaviors.
This is a government that uses fusion centers, which represent the combined surveillance efforts of federal, state and local law enforcement, to track the citizenry’s movements, record their conversations, and catalogue their transactions.
This is a government whose wall-to-wall surveillance has given rise to a suspect society in which the burden of proof has been reversed such that Americans are now assumed guilty until or unless they can prove their innocence.
This is a government that treats its people like second-class citizens who have no rights, and is working overtime to stigmatize and dehumanize any and all who do not fit with the government’s plans for this country.
This is a government that uses free speech zones, roving bubble zones and trespass laws to silence, censor and marginalize Americans and restrict their First Amendment right to speak truth to power. The kinds of speech the government considers dangerous enough to red flag and subject to censorship, surveillance, investigation, prosecution and outright elimination include: hate speech, bullying speech, intolerant speech, conspiratorial speech, treasonous speech, threatening speech, incendiary speech, inflammatory speech, radical speech, anti-government speech, right-wing speech, left-wing speech, extremist speech, politically incorrect speech, etc.
This is a government that persists in renewing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the president and the military to arrest and detain American citizens indefinitely.
This is a government that saddled us with the Patriot Act, which opened the door to all manner of government abuses and intrusions on our privacy.
This is a government that has militarized American’s domestic police, equipping them with military weapons such as “tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft,” in addition to armored vehicles, sound cannons and the like.
This is a government that has provided cover to police when they shoot and kill unarmed individuals just for standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.
This is a government that treats public school students as if they were prison inmates, enforcing zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior, failing to teach them their rights under the Constitution, and indoctrinating them with teaching that emphasizes rote memorization and test-taking over learning, synthesizing and critical thinking.
This is a government that is operating in the negative on every front: it’s spending far more than what it makes (and takes from the American taxpayers) and it is borrowing heavily (from foreign governments and Social Security) to keep the government operating and keep funding its endless wars abroad. Meanwhile, the nation’s sorely neglected infrastructure—railroads, water pipelines, ports, dams, bridges, airports and roads—is rapidly deteriorating.
This is a government that has allowed the presidency to become a dictatorship operating above and beyond the law, regardless of which party is in power.
This is a government that treats dissidents, whistleblowers and freedom fighters as enemies of the state.
This is a government that has in recent decades unleashed untold horrors upon the world—including its own citizenry—in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances, all packaged in the guise of the greater good.
This is a government that allows its agents to break laws with immunity while average Americans get the book thrown at them.
This is a government that speaks in a language of force. What is this language of force? Militarized police. Riot squads. Camouflage gear. Black uniforms. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Surveillance cameras. Kevlar vests. Drones. Lethal weapons.Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Stun grenades. Arrests of journalists. Crowd control tactics. Intimidation tactics. Brutality. Contempt of cop charges.
This is a government that justifies all manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security, national crises and national emergencies.
This is a government that exports violence worldwide, with one of this country’s most profitable exports being weapons. Indeed, the United States, the world’s largest exporter of arms, has been selling violence to the world in order to prop up the military industrial complex and maintain its endless wars abroad.
This is a government that is consumed with squeezing every last penny out of the population and seemingly unconcerned if essential freedoms are trampled in the process.
This is a government that believes it has the authority to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation, the Constitution be damned.
In sum, this is a government that routinely undermines the Constitution and rides roughshod over the rights of the citizenry.
This is not a government that believes in, let alone upholds, freedom.
So where does that leave us?
As always, the first step begins with “we the people.”
Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them. Our power as a citizenry comes from our ability to agree and stand united on certain freedom principles that should be non-negotiable.
It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.” In other words, we have the power to make and break the government. We are the masters and they are the servants. We the American people—the citizenry—are the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.
Our national priorities need to be re-prioritized. For instance, some argue that we need to make America great again. I, for one, would prefer to make America free again.
For the last year, the discussion of the Russia collusion hoax as it relates to Michael Flynn has focused on the criminal case against President Trump’s former national security advisor. Now, all eyes remain fixed on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Two weeks ago it heard, en banc, oral argument to decide whether to direct presiding Judge Emmet Sullivan to dismiss the criminal charge against Flynn.
To Flynn and his family, the criminal jeopardy he faced because of the perjury trap set by Obama administration holdovers is the most concerning. Reasonable Americans of goodwill should be horrified by the personal harm inflicted on the retired lieutenant general and his loved ones.
However, the criminal case is but half the scandal, and the mostly unexamined portion of the plot to force Flynn’s ouster from the Trump administration threatens a more lasting harm to our constitutional republic and the peaceful transition of power.
Political Opposition Sought to Decide a President’s Staff
That the Trump Resistance sought Flynn’s firing seems clear from the evidence. The day before then-FBI Agent Peter Strzok and his colleague Joe Pientka questioned Flynn about Flynn’s telephone conversations with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, the Crossfire Hurricane team met to discuss the strategy.
On the morning of the interview, on January 24, 2017, Assistant Director of FBI Counterintelligence Bill Priestap apparently had second thoughts. “I believe we should rethink this,” notes from a follow-up meeting read. “What is our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired?”
It now appears the primary goal was the ouster of the newly appointed national security advisor. What is less clear, however, is who plotted this plan or knowingly participated in its execution.
A brief exchange between Attorney General William Barr and Fox News’ Mark Levin three Sundays ago suggested these lines of inquiry. About halfway through the hour-long interview, Levin asked the attorney general about the Flynn case. Barr explained how he had appointed U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen to review the Flynn case after Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, began accusing the Department of Justice of misconduct.
“Everyone who knew anything about that case thought it was hinky,” Barr explained. “It didn’t all add up,” he continued, “because the call, on its face”—referring to the late December 2016 call between Flynn and the Russian ambassador—“was a perfectly legitimate call for the incoming national security advisor to make.”
Jensen, whom Barr stressed had 10 years as an FBI agent then another ten years as a career prosecutor prior to his appointment as a U.S. attorney, “found a lot of things that had not come to light before.” “For example,” Barr continued, the evidence “showed clearly that the FBI agents who interviewed Flynn did not think he was lying.”
Significantly, Barr then added: “Now, this was later minimized in testimony as suggesting ‘Well, they meant he didn’t break out into sweat and his eye pupils didn’t contract, that’s all they were saying.’” “No,” Barr declared emphatically. “They were saying he didn’t believe he thought he was lying at the time.”
So, who stated in congressional testimony that the interviewing FBI agents, Pientka and Strzok, merely meant Flynn had not shown any indicia of lying? James Comey.
Comey Switches Testimony on Whether Flynn Lied
First, just a little more than a month after Pientka and Strzok interviewed Flynn, Comey testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. During his March 2, 2017 testimony, Comey stated, “I talked to them about this,” referring to their interview of Flynn, and “they discerned no physical indications of deception. They didn’t see any change in posture, in tone, in inflection, in eye contact. They saw nothing that indicated to them that he knew he was lying to them.” Comey added that after the interview, the agents “drafted a 302 and reported to me and the deputy director.”
Then on December 7, 2018, Comey testified before the House Committees on the Judiciary and Oversight. During that hearing, Comey was asked whether “either of those agents, or both,” had told him “they did not adduce an intent to deceive from their interview with General Flynn.” Comey said “no.”
Rep. Trey Gowdy then asked Comey what Pientka and Strzok had relayed back concerning Flynn’s intent to deceive. “My recollection was,” Comey stated, “the conclusion of the investigators was he was obviously lying, but they saw none of the normal common indicia of deception: that is hesitancy to answer, shifting in seat, sweating, all the things that you might associate with someone who is conscious and manifesting that they are being—they’re telling falsehoods. There’s no doubt he was lying, but that those indicators weren’t there” (emphasis added).
Comey added that he recalled telling the House Intelligence Committee earlier “that the agents observed none of the common indicia of lying — physical manifestations, changes in tone, changes in pace — that would indicate the person I’m interviewing knows they’re telling me stuff that ain’t true.” “They didn’t see that here,” Comey explained. Rather, “it was a natural conversation, answered fully their questions, didn’t avoid. That notwithstanding, they concluded he was lying,” Comey unequivocally affirmed.
When Comey told Congress that the FBI agents “concluded he was lying,” Flynn was on the cusp of being sentenced for supposedly lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. Just three days prior, the special counsel’s office had filed its sentencing memorandum with the court, maintaining that because of Flynn’s “substantial assistance and other considerations set forth below, a sentence at the low end of the guideline range—including a sentence that does not impose a term of incarceration—is appropriate and warranted.” For all intents and purposes, the Flynn case was over.
But when Flynn appeared before Judge Sullivan for sentencing on December 18, 2018, the judge exploded, suggesting the retired lieutenant general had sold out his country and possibly committed treason. Sullivan then suggested Flynn might face jail time if sentencing proceeded. Flynn wisely agreed to delay the sentencing hearing. Then, six months later, Flynn fired the attorneys who had represented him during the Mueller investigation and hired Powell.
Evidence Comey Never Thought Would Surface
Powell immediately demanded the DOJ provide all material relevant to the case against Flynn. Little of significance was forthcoming, though, until Barr tasked Jensen with reviewing the case. Jensen later released several pieces of exculpatory material that Comey likely never expected would see the light of day when he testified before Congress that the agents concluded Flynn was lying.
That evidence included handwritten notes dated January 25, 2017, that stated the FBI assessed that yes, Flynn made false and inaccurate statements, “but believed that Flynn believes that what he said was true,” and that the FBI concluded that Flynn was “largely telling truth as he believed it.”
A typed “Draft Work Product” dated January 30, 2017 was even more explicit, stating that on January 25, 2017, the FBI had briefed the National Security Division and Office of Deputy Attorney General staff on their interview.” The “FBI advised that they believed Flynn believed what he was saying was true.”
Was Comey present for the debrief at which these notes were taken? Did he receive the Draft Work Product that stated the FBI “believed Flynn believed what he was saying was true?” And what, if anything, did Strzok, Pientka, or others tell Comey?
While in his first time testifying on the Hill, Comey noted he had spoken with the agents, during his follow-up testimony, Comey said while that was possible, his recollection was that he had “spoke[n] to people who had spoken to the investigators themselves.”
Here, the recently declassified 302 interview summary of the special counsel’s July 19, 2017, interview of Strzok provides some help. According to the 302, Strzok stated that following the interview of Flynn, he and Pientka “both had the impression at the time that Flynn was not lying or did not think he was lying.” Significantly, Strzok then told the special counsel’s office that after the interview, they “returned to FBI Headquarters and briefed [Andrew] McCabe and Baker on the interview. McCabe briefed Comey.”
So did McCabe mislead Comey, leading Comey to falsely testify that the FBI agents concluded Flynn “was lying?” Or did Comey know the truth based on his conversations with Strzok or Pientka, or reading the reports?
Comey and Yates Misinformed or Lying
These questions matter, and not merely because an affirmative to any of them would call into question the veracity of Comey’s congressional testimony. Rather, they also matter because someone (or many individuals) similarly misinformed Obama Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates: Yates apparently did not know that the agents who interviewed Flynn believed Flynn thought he was accurately recounting his conversations with the Russian ambassador.
Specifically, the 302 interview summary for Yates read: “Yates received a brief readout of the interview the night it happened, and a longer readout the following day. . . . Yates did not speak to the interviewing agents herself but understood from others that their assessment was that Flynn showed no ‘tells’ of lying and it was possible he really did not remember the substance of his calls with Kislyak. On the other hand, the DOJ prosecutors were very skeptical that Flynn would forget the discussion.”
The 302 summary of Yates’s interview further noted that Yates reiterated that, in hearing about the interview, “the DOJ prosecutors thought Flynn was lying, but the FBI didn’t say he wasn’t lying, just that he didn’t exhibit any ‘tells’ that he was lying.”
Yates’s 302 further noted that McCabe had discussed the FBI’s interview of Flynn with Yates. So, it would seem that McCabe also failed to tell Yates that the FBI agents did not think Flynn was lying. Given that Strzok and Pientka briefed McCabe after interviewing Flynn, it is inconceivable that they did not inform McCabe of their assessment that Flynn was not lying.
Did McCabe Lie, Or Did McCord, or Both?
But from declassified materials, it appears that it was not merely McCabe who failed to inform Yates of that important fact. Rather, Mary McCord, who served as the head of the DOJ’s National Security Division, appears to have likewise omitted this significant detail in briefing Yates.
McCord’s 302 stated that “following the Flynn interview, Priestap, Strzok, [Pientka], and FBI General Counsel went to the DOJ to brief them on the interview.” During this meeting, according to McCord’s 302 summary, “Strzok provided a readout of the Flynn interview, since he and another agent had conducted it.”
While McCord’s 302 statement was unclear on what exactly Strzok and Pientka told the DOJ representatives, declassified notes taken by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Tashina Gauhar reveal that during a read-out on January 25, 2017, Strzok and Pientka told McCord (and others) that the FBI assessed that “Flynn believes that what he said was true,” and was being forthright with the agents. The typed Draft Work Product also confirmed that during the January 25, 2017 briefing, the “FBI advised that they believed Flynn believed what he was saying was true.”
Yet it appears that McCord did not inform Yates of this significant fact because, as noted above, Yates’s 302 stated that Yates “did not speak to the interviewing agents herself but understood from others that their assessment was that Flynn showed no ‘tells’ of lying and it was possible he really did not remember the substance of his calls with Kislyak.” Significantly, Yates then said, “the DOJ prosecutors thought Flynn was lying, but the FBI didn’t say he wasn’t lying, just that he didn’t exhibit any ‘tells’ that he was lying.”
Not only did McCord apparently mislead Yates concerning the FBI agents’ assessment of Flynn’s veracity, according to Yates, McCord was “effectively ‘cross examining’ the statements Flynn made to the interviewing agents as compared to the transcripts.” But McCord did more than leave Yates uninformed or misled about the FBI agents’ view that Flynn had not lied: McCord inaccurately summarized the transcript of the calls between Flynn and the Russian ambassador for Yates.
According to McCord’s 302 summary, following Strzok and Pientka’s questioning of Flynn, “McCord reviewed the Flynn transcripts and pulled out excerpts for Yates to reference in the discussion with the White House Counsel’s Office, should they be necessary.” Then, on “January 26, 2017, McCord accompanied Yates to the White House, where they met with White House Counsel Don McGahn and another attorney from his office, James Burham.”
Another Lie: That Flynn Discussed Sanctions
McCord further stated, as summarized in the 302 summary, that Yates “told them that the conversations made it clear that there were discussions on Russian sanctions in those calls, contrary to what Vice President Pence had said on TV.”
But as all Americans (who don’t limit themselves to corporate media reporting) now know with the declassification of the transcripts of Flynn’s calls to Kisylak, Flynn did not discuss Russian sanctions with the Russian ambassador. So Flynn could not possibly have lied to the FBI or to Vice President Mike Pence about discussing sanctions with Kisylak.
So why did Yates think otherwise? Did McCord, who “reviewed the Flynn transcripts” and “pulled out excerpts for Yates” in preparation for the meeting, also mislead Yates about Flynn’s conversation with the ambassador? If so, was it intentional, or was McCord merely a victim of her own confirmation bias?
There is no doubt McCord held a bias: “When McCord left DOJ she was hired by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, serving ‘front and center’ in the whistleblower fraud run by Schiff that later led to the failed attempt to impeach president Trump.”
Intentional or not, Yates regurgitated the false claim to McGahn that Flynn had discussed sanctions with Kisylak and then implied that Flynn had lied to Pence about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. President Trump, believing Flynn had lied to the vice president, then fired Flynn, which was clearly the goal.
Another Tell in Comey’s Testimony
Comey unwittingly gave away the game when he testified before Congress that nothing had happened after President Obama raised Flynn’s conversation with the Russian ambassador during a January 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting also attended by Yates. Comey testified that the following day he had briefed Yates on the calls, and then “nothing, to my mind, happens until the 13th of January, when David Ignatius publishes a column that contains a reference to communications Michael Flynn had with the Russians.”
The reason “nothing happened” was because there was nothing wrong with Flynn’s calls. They were “legitimate,” as Comey put it at the time. It was the illegal leak of the classified intel to Ignatius of Flynn’s conversation with Kislyak that threatened Flynn’s position in the White House, and then only because the FBI questioned Flynn instead of asking him about the transcripts, or sharing the transcripts with the White House to allow the Trump administration to broach the issue with Flynn.
Flynn’s fate, however, was sealed when Yates conveyed to the White House that Flynn had lied to Pence and had been questioned by the FBI. Even then, had Yates conveyed the truth—that the agents believed Flynn had not lied—the Trump administration might have resolved the situation differently.
Instead, though, Obama administration holdovers and partisan career employees succeeded in causing the ouster of the new administration’s pick for national security advisor. And that plot only succeeded because of illegally leaked classified intel. These facts shake the foundation of our constitutional republic and threaten the peaceful transitions of power, and will be a blot on our country’s history long after Flynn obtains some semblance of justice.
Further, the targeting of Flynn was but one thread of the Obama-Biden administration’s attempt to interfere with the Trump administration. The spying on the transition team, the failure to provide Trump defensive briefings, the attempt to sidestep Trump’s attorneys general—successful with Jeff Sessions, but not Barr—and the weaponization of whistleblowing laws to impeach the duly elected president represent the most destructive attack on our government ever.
Come November 2020, Americans should make clear that such interference in their freely chosen commander-in-chief will not profit.
Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Cleveland served nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk to a federal appellate judge and is a former full-time faculty member and adjunct instructor at the college of business at the University of Notre Dame. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded its three-year Russia investigation on Aug. 18 with the release of the fifth and final volume of the report on its work, a 966-page tome resulting from interviews with more than 200 witnesses and the review of more than a million pages of documents.
While offering a broad and detailed view of the counterintelligence issues related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, the hefty volume included just one sentence of vague evidence about the central and essential crime at the epicenter of the debacle—the alleged theft of more than 40,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee.
The two major Russia investigations that preceded the Senate intelligence report didn’t offer the public much more in terms of details or evidence. The final report by special counsel Robert Mueller featured a single paragraph on the matter. The unredacted portion of the report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence included two sentences, neither of which mentioned emails.
The three reports on these formal investigations aren’t the only government records with a glaring lack of evidence about how the emails were taken from the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Over the course of four years, the intelligence community, media organizations, and the private sector released a trickle of hazy and contradictory claims that did nothing to augment the government’s claims.
An exhaustive review by The Epoch Times of more than four years of public records determined that all of the claims and evidence boil down to a single allegation and one piece of circumstantial evidence in Mueller’s final report.
“Between approximately May 25, 2016, and June 1, 2016, GRU officers accessed the DNC’s mail server from a GRU-controlled computer leased inside the United States,” the report, released on April 18, 2019, stated, referencing the acronym for one of Russia’s spy agencies. “During these connections, Unit 26165 officers appear to have stolen thousands of emails and attachments, which were later released by WikiLeaks in July 2016.”
Despite relying heavily on the Mueller report, the fifth volume of the report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) doesn’t feature any of the details from the specific claim by the special counsel. The late-May time frame alleged by Mueller is entirely absent from the committee’s 20-page timeline of the DNC hack. Instead, the SSCI report includes a single vague sentence, as part of an undated timeline entry that mentions neither emails nor hacking.
“Henry testified that CrowdStrike was ‘able to see some exfiltration and the types of files that had been touched’ but not the content of those files,” the Aug. 18 report states, citing the committee’s interview with Shawn Henry, the head of the team from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which the DNC brought in to handle the breach on April 30, 2016.
The office of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the acting chairman of the SSCI, didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
CrowdStrike’s official timeline of the DNC event likewise omits the hack that Mueller alleged to have taken place on or about May 25 to June 1, 2016. The cybersecurity firm claims that no hack occurred.
“There is no indication of any subsequent breaches taking place on the DNC’s corporate network or any machines protected by CrowdStrike Falcon,” the company told The Epoch Times.
The likelihood of a hack taking place without CrowdStrike noticing is low, but not impossible. The company had deployed 200 sensors on the committee’s network within the first week of its engagement with the DNC, which began on May 1, 2016, more than three weeks before the alleged hack.
The revelation about the sheer number of sensors deployed on the DNC network is significant for another reason. In his interview with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Dec. 5, 2017, Henry told lawmakers that CrowdStrike “didn’t have a network sensor in place that saw data leave” when answering questions posed by Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) about evidence of email exfiltration.
It’s possible that CrowdStrike didn’t deploy a sensor to monitor the DNC mail server. CrowdStrike didn’t provide a response to a question about whether this was the case, referring The Epoch Times to its statement that no hack had occurred.
Hazy Disclosures
The contradictions and vague statements are abundant beyond the incongruent claims by Mueller and CrowdStrike.
In order to separate which of the myriad claims about the DNC emails actually deal with how the files were taken from the committee’s mail server, timing is essential. The most recent DNC email released by WikiLeaks was dated May 25, 2016, which matches with the time window in Mueller’s allegation. Roughly 99 percent of the emails were sent between April 19 and May 25, 2016, a window that roughly fits the DNC’s 30-day email retention policy. Considering the 30-day window, the emails were most likely taken in the handful of days around May 25.
Because the DNC systems were allegedly subjected to multiple breaches on different dates by at least two separate actors, any allegations that are undated or don’t include the May 25, 2016, timeframe are too vague to be useful to inform the public about how the emails were taken. The claims could be conflating another exfiltration with the enigma of what happened with the emails, or they could be referring to a different theft altogether.
In addition, a separate theft of data is alleged to have occurred on April 22, 2016, during which the alleged hackers took files other than the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks in July 2016. As a result, claims that provide a broad timeline including May 25 and April 22—while not specifically describing what was taken—are equally of little use because it is unclear which events they describe.
The two categories of vagueness described above plague every claim made by the government about the DNC emails since Oct. 7, 2016, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) attributed the hacking to the Russian government.
“The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process,” the joint statement said.
The absence of dates from the allegation would become the norm over time. The choice of broad and imprecise language in the statement about the “alleged hacked emails” isn’t accidental. The FBI, which wasn’t a party to the statement, apparently hadn’t yet received the forensic images of the DNC systems from CrowdStrike when the statement was released.
According to the SSCI report, CrowdStrike billed the FBI $4,000 on Oct. 13, 2016— one week after the DHS-ODNI statement—for the “forensic images that FBI requested.” While it’s possible the FBI received the files earlier, the FBI official who spoke to the committee used the word “requested” rather than “received.” According to Shawn Henry’s interview with the SSCI, CrowdStrike handed over the images to the FBI sometime in October 2016. The FBI didn’t respond to a request to confirm when it received the images.
Despite the certainty with which the DHS and ODNI attributed the broader hacking campaign to Russians, the statement described the hacking of the emails as alleged. The statement’s earlier mention of “recent compromises of e-mails,” is an apparent reference to the email phishing campaign that occurred prior to the theft of the emails.
The government’s haziness about the dates and other details about how the emails were taken tainted every subsequent statement and assessment on the matter. The Dec. 29, 2016, joint analysis report by the DHS, ODNI, and FBI; the Jan. 6, 2017, intelligence community assessment by the CIA, FBI, and NSA; and the March 22, 2018, report on Russian active measures by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) all featured a blatant lack of specificity about when and how the emails were taken.
In addition to reviewing all of the government records on the matter, The Epoch Times reviewed all of the media articles featuring interviews with firsthand witnesses, CrowdStrike’s evolving blog post about the remediation, third-party assessments of CrowdStrike’s work, transcripts of witness interviews, congressional testimony, and third-party analyses of the metadata of the DNC emails.
The sum total of the most detailed claims about how the emails were taken still boils down to roughly the allegation made by Mueller, which is itself directly contradicted by CrowdStrike.
A more detailed version of Mueller’s allegation appeared in the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers Mueller filed nine months prior to his final report on July 13, 2018.
“Between on or about May 25, 2016 and June 1, 2016, the Conspirators hacked the DNC Microsoft Exchange Server and stole thousands of emails from the work accounts of DNC employees,” the indictment alleged. “During that time, Yermakov researched PowerShell commands related to accessing and managing the Microsoft Exchange Server.”
It is unclear why the special counsel’s version of events grew more vague over the months between the filing of the indictment and the publication of the final report. Notably, the report softened the language about the certainty of what transpired from the definitive “stole thousands of emails” to the circumstantial “appear to have stolen thousands of emails.”
What Didn’t Happen
While details about what happened with the DNC emails have been scant, details about what didn’t happen have recently emerged. On May 7, the HPSCI released the transcripts of the interviews it conducted as part of the investigation for the Russian active measures report. The transcript of the interview of Shawn Henry showed that CrowdStrike “did not have concrete evidence that data was exfiltrated from the DNC.”
“We have indicators that data was exfiltrated. We did not have concrete evidence that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated,” Henry told lawmakers on Dec. 5, 2017.
When asked about the date on which the indicators occurred, Henry referred to the separate exfiltration event on April 22, 2016, which occurred a month before the emails were allegedly stolen.
Later in the interview, when asked specifically about the emails, Henry said it was possible for the alleged hackers to view and copy the content of the emails in addition to taking screenshots. The monitoring activity he described is unlikely to have yielded the raw email files published by WikiLeaks and was different from the allegation by the special counsel, who claimed that the emails were taken during a separate breach.
A source with the HPSCI told The Epoch Times that the committee relied on sources other than CrowdStrike to conclude that Russians stole the DNC emails, but couldn’t provide further details because they were classified. The evidence for the theft of the emails was as strong as the evidence of the attribution of the overall hacking campaign to Russia, the source said.
The release of Henry’s transcript prompted CrowdStrike to issue on June 5 the fourth significant update in as many years to its DNC incident response blog post. The update, running at more than 2,400 words, consisted of a Q&A and a timeline of events surrounding CrowdStrike’s remediation work.
The CrowdStrike timeline extensively references the Mueller report, but doesn’t include the crucial May 25 to June 1, 2016, time frame the special counsel provided for the alleged hacking of the DNC mail server.
The Q&A features an apparent misinterpretation of Henry’s testimony, claiming, contrary to what Henry told lawmakers, that CrowdStrike has evidence that data was exfiltrated from the DNC but omitting Henry’s qualification that the evidence was circumstantial. Regardless, the statement, as expected, included no dates and didn’t use the word “emails.”
WASHINGTON—In response to supply disruptions caused by the pandemic, President Donald Trump will sign an executive order in Ohio Thursday to ensure essential medicines, medical supplies, and equipment are made in the United States.
“If we’ve learned anything from the China virus pandemic, it is simply that we’re dangerously over-dependent on foreign nations,” White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told reporters on Thursday.
He said the president will sign a broad executive order in Ohio that covers not just medicines, but also medical supplies such as masks, gloves, goggles, and medical equipment like ventilators.
The executive order is called “Combating Public Health Emergencies and Strengthening National Security by Ensuring Essential Medicines, Medical Countermeasures, and Critical Inputs are Made in the United States.”
According to Navarro, the executive order has three components, which include the “Buy American” order to ensure that government agencies, including the departments of Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, and Defense, buy American products.
The order aims to increase government demand for U.S.-made products to help create a market for manufacturers to invest and to produce in the United States.
The other component of the order is the deregulation, which ensures the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ease rules for the development of advanced manufacturing facilities in the United States.
This will help create “a more rational and streamlined regulatory process” to address national security threats in a timely fashion, Navarro said.
And the third part, which is critical to keep drug prices down is “to catalyze advanced manufacturing and continuous manufacturing techniques.” The objective is to create economies of scale and scope to help reduce the cost of production in the United States.
Besides essential medicines, medical countermeasures are also a key part of this order, Navarro said, as they are crucial to fight national security threats including chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN), as well as pandemic threats.
The executive order also has “an element to combat the trafficking of counterfeit medicines coming in,” primarily “from Communist China,” he added.
The administration has been working for months on the executive order. The pandemic has forced the U.S. government to revisit America’s over-reliance on other countries.
China controls 90 percent of the core chemicals used in generic drugs, which are copies of prescription drugs that are allowed for sale after patent protections on the original drugs expire.
China is also the dominant supplier of personal protective equipment, such as masks, respirators, surgical gowns, and gloves, which are currently in high demand.
During the pandemic, countries where production facilities are located, such as India and China, have imposed export restrictions for critically needed items. That’s disrupted the U.S. pharmaceutical industry’s global supply chain and prompted the White House to take action.
“At a minimum, we need to have enough production to deal with pandemic and CBRN threats,” Navarro said in response to a question by The Epoch Times.
“We’re a long way from that but we can move in Trump time, which is to say as quickly as possible towards closing that gap and today is a big step towards that.”
The looming November presidential election will not delay a report from U.S. Attorney John Durham, Attorney General William Barr told lawmakers in Washington this week.
“I will be very careful. I know what Justice Department policy is,” Barr said while appearing Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee. “Any report will be, in my judgment, not one that is covered by the policy and would disrupt the election.”
The policy in question is informal guidance not to take action that could be viewed as influencing elections. Barr in a memo (pdf) in February said the department “must exercise particular care regarding sensitive investigations and prosecutions … especially in an election year.”
Rep. Debbie Murcasel-Powell (D-Fla.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, tried getting Barr to commit to not releasing the report because of the upcoming election.
“No,” Barr responded. Asked again, he added: “No. I will be very careful.”
“We’re not going to interfere—in fact, I’ve made it clear that we’re not going to tolerate interference,” Barr told the lawmaker.
Durham is probing the origins of the FBI’s investigation into possible links between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russian actors, a probe boosted by unsubstantiated information compiled by a former British spy who was paid by the Democratic National Committee and Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton.
Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Fla.) speaks in Doral, Fla., in a file photograph. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)John Durham is sworn in as the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut in New Haven, Conn., on Feb. 22, 2018. (Courtesy of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut)
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said recently during an appearance on Fox News that criminal charges will come out of the investigation.
“I know I expect indictments based on the evidence I’ve seen,” he said, adding, “It’s all starting to unravel, and I tell you, it’s time that people go to jail and people are indicted.”
Barr has said he doesn’t expert the investigation to directly lead to former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden, who is now running for president. But Americans will recognize some of the names linked to the probe, Barr teased last month.
Later in June, Barr said Durham is “pressing ahead as hard as he can” amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I expect that we will have some developments, hopefully before the end of the summer,” the attorney general said on Fox.
The lack of visible progress has frustrated some Trump allies.
“It’s been slow,” Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) told Barr. “I think the Durham investigation is something most of us were waiting for.”
The attorney general declined to give any details on the probe. “I cannot get into that,” he said.
Janita Kan and Isabel Van Brugen contributed to this report.
“As far as I'm concerned, it's a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity.” -Hunter Thompson
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