Devin Nunes and Trump Media and Technology Group Take on Silicon Valley

Nunes’ goal is to make Truth Social the central node in a pro-free speech communications infrastructure.

by Lee Smith for American Greatness

The effort to destroy Joe Rogan helps illuminate the nature of the current political battlefield. It’s not about normal partisan politics. Rogan isn’t a Republican. In December he said that if Michelle Obama ran for president in 2024 she’d beat Donald Trump. 

Rogan is a thoughtful and curious interviewer who has attracted an enormous following of 11 million listeners, making his podcast one of the biggest in the world. The Left is going after Rogan to test-run a kind of political power never before so successfully exercised in America—autocracy. If the Democratic Party and its allies in the press and social media can topple one of the biggest media voices in the world, they will have shown they can shut down anyone.

What’s needed is a platform that guarantees freedom of speech for America’s pro-America majority. 

Here’s where Devin Nunes steps into the fight. He retired from his Central California congressional seat in December to become Chief Executive Officer of the Trump Media and Technology Group. Τhe most pressing project there is Truth Social, a social media platform that will challenge established, and increasingly autocratic brands, that are in partnership with the U.S. political faction led by Joe Biden and his former employer Barack Obama.

“Social media and big tech represent an ideological battlefield,” says Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. “And because these platforms are now inherently political, it’s good to have someone like Nunes who knows the stakes and the lay of the land. He understands that nothing is normal when it comes to these social media platforms, they are ideological.”

The plan is to have Truth Social ready to go by Spring, in plenty of time for the November midterm elections. Nunes served nine full terms in Congress and stepped down during his 10th. According to colleagues, he believed he would be more helpful designing the communication infrastructure that would allow Americans to communicate with each other and ensure space for elected officials and candidates to message the American public without interference. 

“It couldn’t have been an easy choice for him,” says author and Hoover Institution Fellow Victor Davis Hanson, also a neighbor of Nunes’ in California’s central valley. “If Republicans take back the House in November, he would have been in line to become chairman of the Ways and Means committee,” one of the House’s most important positions, with jurisdiction over taxing and other revenue-raising measures. “But Devin thinks he can do more for conservatives and the country by ensuring Republicans and others fighting Orwellian censorship have a way to communicate without being censored.”

Unlike many on Capitol Hill, Nunes has run a number of businesses, his first as a teenager, but he has no experience as CEO of a large publicly traded company. What made him an ideal candidate for the post was, however, is his work on Capitol Hill, leading (as chairman and ranking member) the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. That background in intelligence work, how American enemies target us through all means of subterfuge, will prove indispensable in his new role.

“The Democrats and their allies will throw everything they have at TMTG,” says Fitton. “The company will be denied access to things you wouldn’t think they could be denied access to. There will be scorched earth attempts to shut them down. Nothing will be off limits.”

And Nunes knows they’ll be coming after him, with as much destructively maniacal force as they did trying to derail his investigation into the FBI’s probe of the 2016 Trump campaign. Nunes saw through the Russiagate narrative, and discovered that federal law enforcement had used programs designed to keep America safe from terror against American citizens. His 2020 book Countdown to Socialism is an account of the press and social media’s central role in pushing information operations against the Democratic Party’s enemies.   

“I was among the many who were disappointed to hear he had left Congress since he was one of the few incorruptible figures there,” says Nunes’ publisher at Encounter Books, and author, Roger Kimball. “His dogged efforts to get to the bottom of extraordinary corruption were exemplary, especially as he took on a malicious cabal of deep-state operatives and the media who saw he was getting close to the truth about the Russia collusion narrative.” 

Kimball says he was proud to publish Nunes’ book. “It articulates the disastrous hold social media and gigantic tech entities have on the free exchange of ideas in our country. In the book, Nunes describes ‘The Funnel,’ or how entities like Google, Facebook and Twitter shape what we see and read, distort the news and prevent us from knowing about important things, and affect our responses.”

What’s driving the decisions made by Big Tech and social media isn’t a business model dependent on the idea of rational self-interest. Rather, it’s ideological warfare in partnership with Democratic Party elites.

“It’s clear the big tech companies are not making real business decisions anymore,” says Fitton. “Their decisions are based on other calculations—they are hostages to the government. Reuters confirmed that the Biden White House is meeting with big tech companies to get them to censor people. And if they don’t? It’s like being a bar owner when local toughs come and extract protection money from you.”

Nunes’ role then is to make Truth Social the central node in a pro-free speech communications infrastructure.  “It’s an alternative to Big Tech and social media, a foil to Silicon Valley and the culture of smugness and censorship,” says Hanson. “Devin has a sixth sense of what’s important and what’s not. He saw well ahead of everyone else what was going on with the Russiagate, and he didn’t back down. He will never back down if he knows he’s right.”

X22, On the Fringe, and more-Feb 13

 

Bleh. Here's tonight's news:

Populist Rebellion, Now and Then

The distinction between the failure of Jack Cade’s rebellion and the success of the American Revolution is before our very eyes and a lesson for the battle we face today.

by Theodore Roosevelt Malloch for American Greatness

The motif of recent U.S. elections has emerged as one of rebellion against the establishment and the oligarchy that perpetuates it. 

Certainly, if Republicans mean to take back control, 2022 will underscore that theme. Issues from illegal immigration to the failure in Afghanistan to rising inflation and high gas prices to rampant crime and senseless mandates and lockdowns will help to hammer that message over and over. It is increasingly likely, although we shouldn’t be overconfident, that we will see an unprecedented red wave and Republicans will win 65-85 seats in the House and four to six in the Senate, putting an effective brake on the Biden socialist power grab and great reset. 

It could set in place a true rebellion, impeach the sitting president, and stop dead in its tracks Biden’s crazy legislation, far-left appointments, and most of his executive orders. 

The larger question, however, is whether some politically amorphous dissident army can truly upend the status quo—and I don’t refer here to the ragtag J6ers alone. Trump’s American carnage speech notwithstanding, it was difficult to battle the RINO incumbents, the deep state, mainstream media, and the elite establishment, all of whom tried to thwart him and his greatness agenda at every turn. The establishment’s horror at the prospect of a successful rebellion belies the history of a nation that was actually founded in rebellion. 

The ghost of rebellion that haunted the English psyche for centuries and that they were determined to crush in that glorious year of 1776 was named Jack Cade. Have you heard of him? You need to study his case if we are to win the coming rebellion. 

In 1450, Cade led a makeshift rebel army against the forces of King Henry VI. He was almost certainly a peasant, but other than that, very little is known about him. This enabled him to shapeshift like a specter of discontent. According to some, Cade was plotting with Richard of York under the name “John Mortimer.” According to others, he was “Dr. Alymere,” son-in-law of a Surrey squire. Still others believed he was a practitioner of some kind of witchcraft. 

Jack Cade’s real name is unknown, as is his history prior to 1450. He appeared, it seems, out of nowhere in the human form of Jack Cade, or whomever, to haunt the kingdom into chaos. 

What is known about Jack Cade is that he led a threateningly large group of peasants, small landowners, some clergy and even some propertied men to the gates of London, mostly in rebellion against taxation from the Hundred Years’ War and pervasive government corruption. This group of minor gentry and land laborers did not seek sweeping social change so much as basic government reform, mostly in the form of lower taxes. 

Upon first hearing of the peasant rebellion, the king sent his troops to Seven Oaks; about 18 miles southeast of London, to strike down the ragtag reformers, and the king’s troops were promptly and soundly defeated. 

Cade’s impromptu army marched to London where they were treated as victors by Londoners who generally agreed that taxes and corruption were pressing problems. Cade’s army became rather enamored with their success and proceeded to storm the Tower of London and behead a few government officials, including Sir James Fiennes, the king’s treasurer, and Sir James’ son-in-law, William Crowmer. The heads of Fiennes and Crowmer were placed atop stakes and paraded through town kissing each other. For good measure, Cade’s men also killed the Sheriff of Kent who, needless to say, had some intent to arrest Cade. 

The king’s men regrouped and fought again but could gain no ground on Cade’s army of malcontents, at which point Cade presented his list of demands to royal officials who agreed to them and granted pardons to the rebellion’s participants. The demands can be summarized simply as “run a decent government.” With agreement on the demands, the rebel army largely dispersed. 

King Henry, though, had no intention of honoring the rebel army’s demands—neither to run a decent government nor to pardon Cade and his men. The new sheriff of Kent chased Cade for 40 miles until he finally caught Cade with a fatal blow of a sword. To further punctuate his rejection of the agreement he’d supposedly accepted, King Henry subjected Cade’s corpse to show trial, and, upon being found guilty, Cade’s corpse was hung, and then cut into pieces that were distributed throughout Kent as a reminder of the king’s disposition on peasant rebellions. Finally, Henry had Cade’s head staked on a pole on London Bridge, kissing no one. 

The specter of Cade’s peasant rebellion has haunted English historians and poets ever since (“For our enemies shall fall before us, inspired with the spirit of putting down kings and princes . . .” Henry VI, Part 2). 

Peter Oliver, the loyalist chief justice of the Massachusetts court wrote in his 1781 Origin & Progress of the American Rebellion “the Hydra was roused. Every factious Mouth vomited out Curses against Great Britain, & the Press rung its changes upon Slavery. A Mr. Delany a principal Lawyer of Virginia, wrote the first Pamphlet of Note upon the Subject, which, as soon as it reached Boston young Mr. Otis, the then Jack Cade of the Rebellion . . .” 

More frightening to the oligarchs than the specter of Jack Cade was the idea of Jack Cade with a printing press marshaling a literate rebellion. Sending the sheriff of Kent to arrest Cade with a blow of a sword would do no good, because as John Milton observed a century earlier, “Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are.” 

If knowledge had become untethered from a world of fixed relationships, and its value increasingly was not in the degree to which it supported and completed a stable and fixed edifice of doctrine, and if books were not dead things, then how was the sheriff of Kent to respond? He could hardly chase down an idea and put it to the sword. 

Peter Oliver’s evocation of Jack Cade as “the Hydra” demonstrates that in the new media world of the 18th century, the press could create many-headed ideas incapable of being silenced by a sheriff’s sword.

But the foundation of colonial education was in fact the Bible, and Oliver was undoubtedly referencing the hydra in the Book of Revelations and fully intended his readers to think of the Judgment Day beast. Only an oligarch would apply the metaphor to the many printing presses fueling the media war and not to the Empire that wished to return to the days when rebellion could be quelled by putting a single man to death. 

In the end, Oliver’s interpretation lost, and the rebel’s version of the hydra was memorialized in America’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence (“He has erected a multitude of New Offices and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance”). 

The colonial oligarchs of the 1760s had feared the press would transform the specter of Jack Cade into an irresistible force of history. When the prime minister requested that King George III charge James Otis—the “Jack Cade of the Rebellion”—with treason (a crime punishable only by execution), the king demurred. It was too late. Though George still harbored hopes of regaining control of Boston, easy access to the press had transformed Otis’ rebellion far beyond anything readily solvable with a sheriff’s blade. 

In the end, Jack Cade vanquished the hydra with the consequential help of new media. And if Otis had Twitter or the like, the king’s hopes for regaining control may have been dashed well before 1776. 

The distinction between the failure of Cade’s rebellion and the success of the American Revolution is before our very eyes and a lesson for the battle we face today. 

Clearly, Bernie Sanders and “the squad” have taken over the Democratic Party and have yet to be hunted by the Biden machine like Cade through the woods of southern England. And it is not going to happen. Biden is not going to do a Clinton-style “triangulation” or course correction because he is too inept and too beholden to the progressives he has armed and employed in all the ranks of his administration. They own him. 

Trump and his cadre, however, are leading a different kind of peasant/populist rebellion—one in which there is an understanding that in order to be effective a rebellion must leverage media and funding to become an unstoppable America First movement that lives in ideas rather than through any single individual, even Trump himself. It needs to have many legs. 

The 2022 midterms will test those legs and the level of dissatisfaction with both Biden and our ensconced establishment. The real crux will be what the Republicans do with their newfound power. Will they break the back of the ruling oligarchy or will they blow in the wind, compromise, and fold as they have so many times before? Will they usher in all new leadership with backbone and the balls to carry through or try to placate the vacuous do-nothing middle and the same old establishment? Will Trump himself, having learned a number of lessons from the last round, demand his party change and go on the offensive? 

Ironically, this makes Trump not a dictator (where the power resides in the person) but rather a true child of the American Revolution (where the power resides in ideas promoted through the word). Trump’s power was and is generated by his persistent refusal to appeasethe oligarchy and established elites. Because, unlike Jack Cade, Trump’s “peasants” won’t get fooled a second time. 

As Jeffrey Tucker, writing for George Gilder’s newsletter, optimistically reminds us, “Not in a very long time has the elite class faced such a drubbing by reality itself. This is why public confidence in basically everything has collapsed . . . exposed as charlatanism and so has the deep state in general along with the political class that gives them cover.” 

“Remember Jack Cade!” should be the rallying cry. 

Remind Russia It Is Part of the West

Today, the world is faced with a menacing Communist China that destroys cultures and communities in the name of unity under its ruling party. Russians should revolt against this, as they have before.

by Gavin Wax for American Greatness

Following Europe’s devastation in World War II, it was unthinkable that a united Germany would become a member in good standing of the West, let alone its frequent standard-bearer. Since reunification, however, the German economy has become the lifeblood of the European Union and the Eurozone. Given that Germany exerts an almost hegemonic force throughout Europe through EU institutions, it is difficult to conceive of a European Union in which Germany is not an integral part. 

To accept this large role for Germany—the twice-defeated paragon of post-Prussian militarism—would have been unthinkable for any American, Frenchman, or Briton in the immediate aftermath of those wars. At that time, the West saw its role as rebuilding Germany outside of the Soviet sphere of influence. Over time, however, Germany grew beyond the modest goals of the denazification campaign and Marshall Plan. 

Similarly, it is hard to imagine a Russian Federation today that stands with the free nations of the West, let alone serves as one of its standard-bearers. With Russian-backed incursions into South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008, the annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the congregation of 100,000 Russian troops on the Ukrainian border, such a role seems inconceivable. But the result—the unimaginable vaunting of the Russian Federation from pariah to leader—could be similar. The path to get there need not be. 

The West, under the direction of the American intelligence community, decided to manipulate Joe Biden, alleging that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been planning an imminent invasion. Given that Putin understands the significance of a military conflict with the West or, even barring that, the potential for economic upheaval wrought by comprehensive sanctions on the Russian economy, it seems improbable that he would pursue such a strategy. Instead, he has engaged in a game of brinkmanship that retains Ukraine as a buffer but decreases the likelihood that it will join NATO in the foreseeable future. 

Putin’s image is predicated upon personal and national strength. It is doubtful he will walk away with his head bowed or initiate a new war for the conquest of Ukraine, only to find himself with a NATO border rather than a buffer. More probably, the Biden Administration and the American intelligence community are exacerbating the threat of a Russian invasion (which has no strategic significance to the safety of American territorial interests or security) to distract from the growing problem that the West is not inclined to face: Red China. With or without Putin, the Russians can and should be part of the inevitable Western alliance standing against Red China and the genocidal Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime that rules it. 

Today, Russians can choose to avoid war and the mistakes made by the more militaristic, pre-war Germans. They can prevent the humiliation of the kind of war whose destruction and shame are not yet known. They can take what should, in any event, be their rightful place at the table of Western cultures and nations. After all, Russian culture in so many ways is linked to the Western experience. Yet, politically and militarily, it stands across a chasm. 

Despite what will surely be further intervention by the intelligence community and corrupt Biden officials to villainize Russia, the historic Russian nation holds a unique position as the great bridge between East and West. Given the current state of the East, where a technocratic regime has melded Stalinist ideology with cutting-edge (mostly stolen) technology to create a brutal autocracy, the West would benefit from a more substantial presence in that sphere of influence. 

China is nothing more than a blood-soaked sweatshop churning out cheap goods for Western consumers. Russia, more by necessity than by historical linkage, finds itself aligned with the Chinese Communist Party. Despite this, the connections that bind the Russian people and culture to the West are strong enough that the Russians ultimately will be more drawn to the West in this epic cultural showdown. 

The West shares musical, literary, artistic, philosophical, military, religious, and political tastes and history with the Russians in ways it cannot with the Chinese. Tchaikovsky, Tolstoy, and the dominant Soviet Hockey Team are part of Western culture and lore. Similarly, the Beatles, “The Godfather,” and the 1980 USA Hockey Team are part of Russia’s. The West and the Russians share none of these things and nothing like them with China or the Chinese people. A Westerner dropped without context into Moscow will feel perplexed by the strange script, but he will still recognize the city and its trappings as essentially familiar; the same cannot be said for one dropped in Beijing. The Russians have little desire to be in China, while they consistently make their preference for Western cities known, as anyone who has wandered around Mayfair can attest. 

It is more than just mutual cultural affinity that allows us to consider the Russians and the West as one. Chinese culture is inherently unappealing to Russians, and not on a relative basis to the rest of the West. As manifested by the CCP, the nature of Chinese politics and academics strikes hard against the grain of Russian sensitivities. There is no deep and lasting compatibility between the Chinese and the Russians; Russian Orthodox priests and day-to-day Russian cynicism about government autocracy are cardinal sins for the Chinese. No Russian would choose to live under a Chinese regime, but many can tolerate Putin and welcome the opportunity to move to any other Western city. 

If we ask what Putin should do for the Russian people, it is fair to suggest that he offer a grand gesture indicating a desire to be firmly part of Western culture and alliances. Perhaps this would require a shift in strategy—either from him or from NATO and its allies. But such a gesture, in light of the tremendous challenges that a developing and increasingly confident Communist China presents, represents a risk worth taking. 

Today, the world is faced with a menacing China that destroys cultures and communities in the name of unity under its ruling party. The Russians revolted against this sort of intrusion and institutionalized undermining of creativity when the Communists did it to them; they will do so again if they see the Russian Federation making itself party to corrupt dealmaking with the Chinese that stifles their hard-won opportunities. 

During the past two decades, in many ways, the Russian Federation has become a vanguard for the defense of Western values against the elite, globalist ideology peddled by those who would rather see borders erased than Western civilization preserved. Putin has played to popular sentiment in his country to prevent the emergence of progressive ideology that has riled the West. Perhaps more than anything else, the Russian Federation can serve as a bridge that enables a united front to combat the CCP while reminding us of the respect for our own heritage that too many in the West willfully reject in pursuit of the latest woke ideology. 

Biden Called Putin, but Now There Are Big Questions About Threat and Ukraine Wants Answers

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

You would think that Joe Biden wants war between Ukraine and Russia, he keeps hyping the question so much, despite the Ukrainians trying to downplay the immediacy of the threat. As we reported earlier, on Friday, the Administration urged Americans to leave Ukraine.

But Biden was on a phone call with Vladimir Putin Saturday. That always has to be a concern when Biden is let loose because he’s already said things that have gummed up the works and made things worse on the matter. He seemed to give Putin a pass, if Russia just committed a “minor incursion” of Ukraine.

Now, it’s hard to know at this point precisely what he talked about because the White House isn’t going to tell us of the gaffes; we’re just going to have to hear about it in time.

But the readout of the call doesn’t exactly scream like the strongest thing, nor did it show that the call achieved anything at all beyond Biden being able to say that he made it.

This is not exactly making Putin quake in his boots:

Readout of President Biden’s Call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia

President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. spoke today with President Vladimir Putin of Russia about Russia’s escalating military buildup on the borders of Ukraine. President Biden was clear that, if Russia undertakes a further invasion of Ukraine, the United States together with our Allies and partners will respond decisively and impose swift and severe costs on Russia. President Biden reiterated that a further Russian invasion of Ukraine would produce widespread human suffering and diminish Russia’s standing. President Biden was clear with President Putin that while the United States remains prepared to engage in diplomacy, in full coordination with our Allies and partners, we are equally prepared for other scenarios.

Does he think Putin is going to be deterred because he, Biden, says there might be “suffering,” or it might “diminish Russia’s standing”? Putin doesn’t give a darn if Biden says mean words to him. What he is seeing is that Biden hasn’t been willing to up the sanctions now, before an invasion, to stop him from bad behavior. Biden is just going to wait and be reactive.

Even the execrable Natasha Bertrand of CNN couldn’t find that this achieved anything.

One more thing that all this furor does: it shows once again who Russia is afraid of. They didn’t take precipitous actions like this when President Donald Trump was in command. But with Joe Biden, here they are.

Trump himself also points to why Russia has become emboldened: because they’ve seen the incompetent Biden in action. Thanks, Democrats!

From Fox News:

Trump says the blame for the situation belongs to the Biden administration and tied it to the August withdrawal from Afghanistan – claiming that both China and Russia were watching closely.

“How we got here is when they watched Afghanistan, and they watched the most incompetent withdrawal in the history of probably any army let alone just us, and President Xi [Jinping] and President Putin – watch what happens with China very soon with Taiwan – and they watched that, and they said: ‘What’s going on? They don’t know what they’re doing.’ And all of a sudden I think they got a lot more ambitious.” [….]

“I think Putin really wanted to negotiate for a period of time, but when he watched Afghanistan when he watched that unbelievably bad withdrawal, incompetent, where they took the Military out first, where they left $85 billion worth of equipment behind for the Taliban to have and to use and of course the deaths that happened – when they watched all of that I think they got emboldened.” […]

“This is just an exercise, he’s not going to tell him anything and I don’t think at this point Putin’s at this point going to be listening,” he said.

That’s pretty accurate analysis, along with seeing how Barack Obama folded like a cheap suit in 2014, and knowing that Biden was his VP. We wouldn’t be seeing this if Trump were there.

But, pulling out these folks doesn’t sound very smart.

Meanwhile, it’s gotten to where Biden has no credibility even with the Ukrainians. They are demanding to see the evidence that he claims to have about the invasion because they’re not seeing the same things.

The messaging spooked the Ukrainian government, which demanded to see intelligence that Russia is planning to invade on Wednesday.

Diplomatic sources told DailyMail.com it was part of a strategy designed to deny Moscow any attempt to launch a ‘false flag’ operation as justification for attacking Ukraine.

So, are they saying this claim of an imminent threat is all some sort of ruse, thinking that will ward Putin off? That would be an incredibly bad move by Biden — and no wonder the Ukrainians would be upset.

 

Baghdad Bob

Article by Andrea Widburg in The American Thinker

Durham makes allegations that make Watergate look like small potatoes

On Friday, Special Counsel John Durham filed with the D.C. Federal District Court a what should have been a boring conflict of interest motion, but it hid a surprise: The Clinton campaign, through Perkins Coie, spied on Trump both before and after he was president. The following is an plain English-language summary of relevant parts of the motion:

Michael Sussman was a partner at Law Firm-1 (i.e., Perkins Coie). He met with the FBI General Counsel (i.e., James Baker), and offered data and “white papers” purporting to show that Trump was communicating covertly with a Russia-based bank (i.e., Alfa-Bank). Mueller, incidentally, had to admit this was untrue.

Durham indicted Sussman because he allegedly told Baker that he was not divulging this information for a client. In fact, he was acting for at least two clients: the Clinton campaign and “Tech Executive-1” (i.e., Rodney Joffe), who worked at a “U.S.-based internet company” (i.e., Neustar Inc., a federal contractor).

As part of his work on the Clinton campaign, Sussman repeatedly met and communicated both with Joffe and with “another law partner” who was “Campaign Lawyer-1.” (I guess we can await that indictment soon....)

Beginning in July 2016, Joffe began to work with (1) Sussman, (2) an investigation firm that Perkins Coie hired for the Clinton campaign, (3) cyber researchers, and (4) “employees at multiple Internet companies” to assemble the data handed to James Baker. To do so, Joffe exploited access to private and/or proprietary internet data. He even coopted researchers at a U.S. university who were receiving lots of internet data as part of a cybersecurity research contract that was pending with the feds. (The Conservative Treehouse says the university is Georgia Tech and it was a DARPA contract.)

Durham alleges that Joffe was accessing internet traffic for “a particular healthcare provider” (speculated to be Spectrum Health), Trump Tower, Donald Trumps Central Park West apartment building, and “the Executive Office of the President of the United States (‘EOP’).” (Emphasis mine.)

Joffe had a very specific assignment for the people working for him: He wanted them to mine internet data (and again, this was not public data) to “establish ‘an inference’ and ‘narrative’” that would tie then-candidate Trump to Russia. He told people that he was “seeking to please certain ‘VIPs,” meaning both Perkins Coie and the Hillary campaign.

Much of the motion is concerned with allegations already familiar to you from the indictment against Sussman. Thus, after talking to Baker, Sussman also talked to another government agency, telling its employees that DNS data (that is “Domain Name System” info, which is like an internet telephone director) revealed that Trump or his team had looked up Russian contacts millions of times.

Sussman neglected to add that these DNS lookups were for Trump Tower as a whole, which is a massive business center. More importantly, when reporting about lookups from the “EOP” (that is, the White House server), Sussman didn’t mention that many of those DNS lookups went back to 2014—that is, when Obama was in the White House.

 So again: Durham just let everyone know that the Hillary campaign, acting through Perkins Coie and its attorneys, engaged a tech-savvy executive to spy on Trump internet searches. This executive exploited his connections to obtain private and proprietary data (including federal government data) to review internet searches originating in Trump Tower, Trump’s home, and the White House. Moreover, this spying, which began when Trump was still a candidate, continued once he became president.

Trump, obviously, trumpeted the fact that he was right all along, as well as making clear the enormity of what happened:

Obviously, it’s nice to be proven correct. However, I agree with Conservative Treehouse that there are a few glaring problems here. Preliminarily,

The obvious question is: If Rodney Joffe is spying on the office of the president, why hasn’t he been indicted?

That’s just one question, though. The real problem, which Sundance places at the head of his post, is this:

CTH begins every outline of the ongoing Durham investigation with the following disclaimer: How is John Durham going to reveal everything that is possible about the deep state Trump targeting operation, and simultaneously handle the involvement of Robert Mueller, Andrew Weissmann and the Special Counsel team who were specifically appointed to cover it up?

The short answer is, Durham can’t. The ramifications would collapse the U.S. government; yes, all three collaborating branches.

As a consequence, some of these revelations are only valuable insofar as they will be needed by historians who look upon the scattered rubble of this once great republic and seek to explain to future generations how it all went wrong.

In other words, the Durham investigation is almost certainly just another cover-up. The Russia Hoax is a huge infection in the American body politic. It was Mueller’s responsibility, and it’s now Durham’s, to hide that infection. To that end, Durham is going to focus America’s attention on a few hangnails and scratches, in the hope it deflects us from the fact that the American political system is dying from sepsis. I would love to see Durham expose the whole festering mess, and I’d happily eat my words, but I don’t see that happening.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/durham_makes_allegations_that_make_watergate_look_like_small_potatoes.html 

 

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The Surveillance and Political Spying Operations Highlighted by John Durham Today are the Tip of the Iceberg

posted by Sundance at Conservative Treehouse

Against the latest court filings by John Durham, highlighting the tip of the political surveillance iceberg, I have been asked to re-post the deep dive into the totality of the scale of the iceberg.  I will add some of the latest information into the outline to show how it all connects.

Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; instead, what they did was take the preexisting system and retool it, so the weapons only targeted one side of the political continuum.

Together they recalibrated the domestic surveillance capabilities, the internal spying systems, so that only their political opposition would be targeted. This point is where many people understandably get confused.

In the era shortly after 9/11, the DC national security apparatus was constructed to preserve continuity of government and simultaneously view all Americans as potential threats.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were created specifically for this purpose.

What Barack Obama and Eric Holder did with that new construct was refine the internal targeting mechanisms so that only their ideological opposition became the target of the new national security system.  This is a very important nuance to understand as you dig deeper into this research outline.

Washington DC created the modern national security apparatus immediately and hurriedly after 9/11/01.  DHS came along in 2002 and within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 the ODNI was formed.  When Barack Obama and Eric Holder arrived a few years later, those newly formed institutions were viewed as opportunities to create a very specific national security apparatus that would focus almost exclusively against their political opposition.

The preexisting Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Dept of Justice (DOJ) were then repurposed to become two of the four pillars of the domestic national security apparatus.  However, this new construct would have a targeting mechanism based on political ideology.  The DHS, ODNI, DOJ and FBI became the four pillars of this new institution.  Atop these pillars is where you will find the Fourth Branch of Government.

We were not sleeping when this happened, we were wide awake.  However, we were stunningly distracted by the economic collapse that was taking place in 2006 and 2007 when the engineers behind Obama started to assemble the design.  By the time Obama took office in 2009, we sensed something profound was shifting, but we can only see exactly what shifted in the aftermath.  The four pillars were put into place, and a new Fourth Branch of Government was quietly created.

As time passed, and the system operators became familiar with their new tools, technology allowed the tentacles of the system to reach out and touch us. That is when we first started to notice that something very disconcerting was happening.  Those four pillars are the root of it, and if we take the time to understand how the Fourth Branch originated, questions about this current state of perpetual angst will start to make sense.

Grab a cup of your favorite beverage and take a walk with me as we outline how this was put together.  You might find many of the questions about our current state of political affairs beginning to make a lot more sense.

Remember, it is not my intent to outline the entire history of how we got to this place where the intelligence community now acts as the superseding fourth branch of government. Such an effort would be exhausting and likely take our discussion away from understanding the current dynamic.

History provided enough warnings from Dwight D. Eisenhower (military) to John F. Kennedy (CIA), to Richard Nixon (FBI), to all modern versions of warnings and frustrations from HPSCI Devin Nunes and ODNI Ric Grenell. None of those prior reference points are invalid, and all documented outlines of historic reference are likely true and accurate. However, a generational review is not useful, as the reference impacting us ‘right now‘ gets lost.

Instead, we pick up the expansive and weaponized intelligence system as it manifests after 9/11/01, and my goal is to highlight how the modern version of the total intelligence apparatus has now metastasized into a Fourth Branch of Government. It is this superseding branch that now touches and influences every facet of our life.

If we take the modern construct, originating at the speed of technological change, we can also see how the oversight or “check/balance” in our system of government became functionally obsolescent.

After many years of granular research about the intelligence apparatus inside our government, in the summer of 2020 I visited Washington DC to ask specific questions. My goal was to go where the influence agents within government actually operate, and to discover the people deep inside the institutions no one elected, and few people pay attention to.

It was during this process when I discovered how information is purposefully put into containment silos; essentially a formal process to block the flow of information between agencies and between the original branches. While frustrating to discover, the silo effect was important because understanding the communication between networks leads to our ability to reconcile conflict between what we perceive and what’s actually taking place.

After days of research and meetings in DC during 2020; amid a town that was serendipitously shut down due to COVID-19; I found a letter slid under the door of my room in a nearly empty hotel with an introduction of sorts. The subsequent discussions were perhaps the most important. After many hours of specific questions and answers on specific examples, I realized why our nation is in this mess. That is when I discovered the fourth and superseding branch of government, the Intelligence Branch.

I am going to explain how the Intelligence Branch works: (1) to control every other branch of government; (2) how it functions as an entirely independent branch of government with no oversight; (3) how and why it was created to be independent from oversight; (4) what is the current mission of the IC Branch, and most importantly (5) who operates it.

The Intelligence Branch is an independent functioning branch of government, it is no longer a subsidiary set of agencies within the Executive Branch as most would think. To understand the Intelligence Branch, we need to drop the elementary school civics class lessons about three coequal branches of government and replace that outlook with the modern system that created itself.

The Intelligence Branch functions much like the State Dept, through a unique set of public-private partnerships that support it. Big Tech industry collaboration with intelligence operatives is part of that functioning, almost like an NGO. However, the process is much more important than most think. In this problematic perspective of a corrupt system of government, the process is the flaw – not the outcome.

There are people making decisions inside this little known, unregulated and out-of-control branch of government that impact every facet of our lives.

None of the people operating deep inside the Intelligence Branch were elected; and our elected representative House members genuinely do not know how the system works. I assert this position affirmatively because I have talked to House and Senate staffers, including the chiefs of staff for multiple House & Senate committee seats. They are not malicious people; however, they are genuinely clueless of things that happen outside their silo. That is part of the purpose of me explaining it, with examples, in full detail with sunlight.

We begin….

In April of 2016, the FBI launched a counterintelligence operation against presidential candidate Donald Trump. The questioning about that operation is what New York Representative Elise Stefanik cites in March of 2017, approximately 11 months later (First Two Minutes).

Things to note:

♦ Notice how FBI Director James Comey just matter-of-factly explains no one outside the DOJ was informed about the FBI operation. Why? Because that’s just the way things are done. His justification for unilateral operations was “because of the sensitivity of the matter“, totally ignoring any constitutional or regulatory framework for oversight; because, well, quite simply, there isn’t any. The intelligence apparatus inside the DOJ/FBI can, and does, operate based on their own independent determinations of authority.

♦ Notice also how FBI Director Comey shares his perspective that informing the National Security Council (NSC) is the equivalent of notifying the White House. The FBI leadership expressly believe they bear no responsibility to brief the Chief Executive. As long as they tell some unknown, unelected, bureaucratic entity inside the NSC, their unwritten responsibility to inform the top of their institutional silo is complete. If the IC wants to carve out the Oval Office, they simply plant information inside the NSC and, from their perspective, their civic responsibility to follow checks-and-balances is complete. This is an intentional construct.

♦ Notice how Comey obfuscates notification to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), by avoiding the fact James Clapper was the DNI from outset of the counterintelligence operation throughout the remainder of Obama’s term. When I get deeper into the process, we will understand how the Intelligence Branch has intentionally used the creation of the DNI position (established post 9/11/01) as a method to avoid oversight, not enhance it. Keeping an oblivious doofus like James Clapper in position held strategic value [Doofus Reminder HERE].

That video of James Comey being questioned by Elise Stefanik was the first example given to me by someone who knew the background of everything that was taking place preceding that March 20, 2017, hearing. That FBI reference point is a key to understand how the Intelligence Branch operates with unilateral authority above Congress (legislative branch), above the White House (executive branch), and even above the court system (judicial branch).

Also, watch this short video of James Clapper because it is likely many readers have forgotten, and likely even more readers have never seen it.  Watch closely how then White House national security adviser John Brennan is responding in that video.  This is before Brennan became CIA Director, this is when Brennan was helping Barack Obama put the pillars into place.  WATCH:

[Sidebar: Every time I post this video it gets scrubbed from YouTube (example), so save it if you ever want to see it again.]

The video of James Clapper highlights how the ODNI position (created with good national security intention) ended up becoming the fulcrum for modern weaponization, and is now an office manipulated by agencies with a vested interest in retaining power. The Intelligence Branch holds power over the ODNI through their influence and partnership with the body that authorizes the power within it, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).

Factually, the modern intelligence apparatus uses checks and balances in their favor. The checks create silos of proprietary information, classified information, vaults of information that work around oversight issues. The silos are part of the problem.

Ironically, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created in the aftermath of 9/11/01 expressly to eliminate the silos of information which they felt led to a domestic terrorist attack that could have been prevented. The ODNI was created specifically upon the recommendation of the 9/11 commission.

The intent was to create a central hub of intelligence information, inside the Executive Branch, where the CIA, NSA, DoD, DoS, and DIA could deposit their unique intelligence products and a repository would be created so that domestic intelligence operations, like the DOJ and FBI could access them when needed to analyze threats to the U.S. This, they hoped, would ensure the obvious flags missed in the 9/11 attacks would not be missed again.

The DNI office created a problem for those who operate in the shadows of proprietary information. You’ll see how it was critical to install a person uniquely skilled in being an idiot, James Clapper, into that willfully blind role while intelligence operatives worked around the office to assemble the Intelligence Branch of Government.

• The last federal budget that flowed through the traditional budgetary process was signed into law in September of 2007 for fiscal year 2008 by George W. Bush. Every budget since then has been a fragmented process of continuing resolutions and individual spending bills.

Why does this matter? Because many people think defunding the Intelligence Community is a solution; it is not…. at least, not yet. Worse yet, the corrupt divisions deep inside the U.S. intelligence system can now fund themselves from multinational private sector partnerships (banks, corporations and foreign entities).

• When Democrats took over the House of Representatives in January 2007, they took office with a plan. Nancy Pelosi became Speaker, and Democrats controlled the Senate where Harry Reid was Majority Leader. Barack Obama was a junior senator from Illinois.

Pelosi and Reid intentionally did not advance a budget in 2008 (for fiscal year 2009) because their plan included installing Barack Obama (and all that came with him) with an open checkbook made even more lucrative by a worsening financial crisis and a process called baseline budgeting. Baseline budgeting means the prior fiscal year budget is accepted as the starting point for the next year budget. All previous expenditures are baked into the cake within baseline budgeting.

Massive bailouts preceded Obama’s installation due to U.S. economic collapse, and massive bailouts continued after his installation. This is the ‘never let a crisis go to waste’ aspect. TARP (Troubled Asset Recovery Program), auto bailouts (GM), and the massive stimulus spending bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, ie. those shovel ready jobs) were all part of the non budget spending. The federal reserve assisted with Quantitative Easing (QE1 and QE2) as congress passed various Porkulous spending bills further spending and replacing the formal budget process.

Note: There has never been a budget passed in the normal/traditional process since September of 2007.

• While Obama’s radical ‘transformation‘ was triggered across a broad range of government institutions, simultaneously spending on the U.S. military was cut, but spending on the intelligence apparatus expanded. We were all distracted by Obamacare, and the Republican party wanted to keep us that way. However, in the background there was a process of transformation taking place that included very specific action by Eric Holder and targeted effort toward the newest executive agency the ODNI.

The people behind Obama, those same people now behind Joe Biden, knew from years of strategic planning that ‘radical transformation’ would require control over specific elements inside the U.S. government. Eric Holder played a key role in his position as U.S. Attorney General in the DOJ.

AG Holder recruited ideologically aligned political operatives who were aware of the larger institutional objectives.

One of those objectives was weaponizing the DOJ-National Security Division (DOJ-NSD) a division inside the DOJ that had no inspector general oversight. For most people the DOJ-NSD weaponization surfaced with a hindsight awakening of the DOJ-NSD targeting candidate Donald Trump many years later. However, by then the Holder crew had executed almost eight full years of background work.

• The second larger Obama/Holder objective was control over the FBI. Why was that important? Because the FBI does the domestic investigative work on anyone who needs or holds a security clearance. The removal of security clearances could be used as a filter to further build the internal ideological army they were assembling. Additionally, with new power in the ODNI created as a downstream consequence of the Patriot Act, new protocols for U.S. security clearances were easy to justify.

Carefully selecting fellow ideological travelers was facilitated by this filtration within the security clearance process. How does that issue later manifest?   Just look around at how politicized every intelligence agency has become, specifically including the FBI.

• At the exact same time this new background security clearance process was ongoing, again everyone distracted by the fight over Obamacare, inside the Department of State (Secretary Hillary Clinton) a political alignment making room for the next phase was being assembled. Names like Samantha Power, Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton were familiar on television while Lisa Monaco worked as a legal liaison between the Obama White House and Clinton State Department.

Through the Dept of State (DoS) the intelligence apparatus began working on their first steps to align Big Tech with a larger domestic institutional objective. Those of you who remember the “Arab Spring”, some say “Islamist Spring”, will remember it was triggered by Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo – his first foreign trip. The State Department worked with grassroots organizers (mostly Muslim Brotherhood) in Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Qatar and Libya. Obama leaned heavily on the organizational network of Turkish President Recep Erdogan for contacts and support.

Why does this aspect matter to us? Well, you might remember how much effort the Obama administration put into recruiting Facebook and Twitter as resources for the various mideast rebellions the White House and DoS supported. This was the point of modern merge between the U.S. intelligence community and Big Tech social media.

In many ways, the coordinated political outcomes in Libya and Egypt were the beta test for the coordinated domestic political outcomes we saw in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The U.S. intelligence community working with social media platforms and political operatives.

Overlaying all of that background activity was also a new alignment of the Obama-era intelligence apparatus with ideological federal “contractors“. Where does this contractor activity manifest? In the FISA Court opinion of Rosemary Collyer who cited the “interagency memorandum of understanding”, or MOU.

Hopefully, you can see a small part of how tentacled the system to organize/weaponize the intelligence apparatus was. None of this was accidental, all of this was by design, and the United States Senate was responsible for intentionally allowing most of this to take place.

That’s the 30,000/ft level backdrop history of what was happening as the modern IC was created. Next, we will go into how all these various intelligence networks began working in unison and how they currently control all of the other DC institutions under them; including how they can carve out the President from knowing their activity.

♦ When Barack Obama was installed in January 2009, the Democrats held a 60-seat majority in the U.S. Senate. As the people behind the Obama installation began executing their longer-term plan, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was a tool to create the Intelligence Branch; it was not an unintentional series of events.

When Obama was installed, Dianne Feinstein was the Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), and Democrat operative Dan Jones was her lead staffer. Feinstein was completely controlled by those around her including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The CIA was in the process of turning over personnel following the Bush era, and as a result of a massive multi-year narrative of diminished credibility (Iraq WMD), a deep purge was underway. Obama/Holder were in the process of shifting intelligence alignment and the intensely political Democrat Leader Harry Reid was a key participant.

THE TRAP – Many people say that Congress is the solution to eliminating the Fourth and superseding Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. This is an exercise in futility because the Legislative Branch, specifically the SSCI, facilitated the creation of the Intelligence Branch. The SSCI cannot put the genie they created back in the bottle without admitting they too are corrupt; and the background story of their corruption is way too intense to be exposed now.

Every member of the SSCI is compromised in some controlling manner. Those Senators who disliked the control over them; specifically disliked because the risk of sunlight was tenuous and, well, possible; have either left completely or stepped down from the committee. None of the SSCI members past or present would ever contemplate saying openly what their tenure involved.

[Note: You might remember when Vice Chairman Mark Warner’s text messages surfaced, there was a controlled Republican SSCI member who came to his defense in February of 2018. It was not accidental that exact Senator later became the chair of the SSCI himself. That Republican Senator is Marco Rubio, now vice-chair since the Senate re-flipped back to the optics of Democrat control in 2021.]

All of President Obama’s 2009 intelligence appointments required confirmation from the Senate. The nominees had to first pass through the Democrat controlled SSCI, and then to a full Senate vote where Democrats held a 60-vote majority. Essentially, Obama got everyone he wanted in place easily. Rahm Emmanuel was Obama’s Chief of Staff, and Valerie Jarrett was Senior Advisor.

Tim Geithner was Treasury Secretary in 2010 when the joint DOJ/FBI and IRS operation to target the Tea Party took place after the midterm “shellacking” caused by the Obamacare backlash.

Mitch McConnell was Minority Leader in the Senate but supported the targeting of the Tea Party as his Senate colleagues were getting primaried by an angry and effective grassroots campaign. McConnell’s friend, Senator Bob Bennett, getting beaten in Utah was the final straw.

Dirty Harry and Mitch McConnell saw the TEA Party through the same prism. The TEA Party took Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts (Scott Brown); Sharon Angle was about to take out Harry Reid in Nevada; Arlen Spector was taken down in Pennsylvania; Senator Robert Byrd died; Senator Lisa Murkowski lost her primary to Joe Miller in Alaska; McConnell’s nominee Mike Castle lost to Christine O’Donnell in Delaware; Rand Paul won in Kentucky. This is the background. The peasants were revolting…. and visibly angry Mitch McConnell desperately made a deal with the devil to protect himself.

In many ways, the TEA Party movement was/is very similar to the MAGA movement. The difference in 2010 was the absence of a head of the movement, in 2015 Donald Trump became that head figure who benefited from the TEA Party energy. Trump came into office in 2017 with the same congressional opposition as the successful TEA Party candidates in 2011.

Republicans took control of the Senate following the 2014 mid-terms. Republicans took control of the SSCI in January 2015. Senator Richard Burr became chairman of the SSCI, and Dianne Feinstein shifted to Vice-Chair. Dirty Harry Reid left the Senate, and Mitch McConnell took power again.

Republicans were in control of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2015 when the Intelligence Branch operation against candidate Donald Trump was underway. [Feinstein’s staffer, Dan Jones, left the SSCI so he could act as a liaison and political operative between private-sector efforts (Fusion GPS, Chris Steele) and the SSCI.] The SSCI was a participant in that Fusion-GPS/Chris Steele operation, and as a direct consequence Republicans were inherently tied to the problem with President Trump taking office in January of 2017. Indiana Republican Senator Dan Coats was a member of the SSCI.

Bottom line…. When it came to the intelligence system targeting Donald Trump during the 2015/2016 primary, the GOP was just as much at risk as their Democrat counterparts.

When Trump unexpectedly won the 2016 election, the SSCI was shocked more than most. They knew countermeasures would need to be deployed to protect themselves from any exposure of their intelligence conduct. Dianne Feinstein stepped down, and Senator Mark Warner was elevated to Vice Chairman.

Indiana’s own Mike Pence, now Vice President, recommended fellow Hoosier, SSCI Senator Dan Coats, to become President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). [Apply hindsight here]

• To give an idea of the Intelligence Branch power dynamic, remind yourself how House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Chairman Devin Nunes, tried to get access to the DOJ/FBI records of the FISA application used against the Trump campaign via Carter Page.

Remember, Devin Nunes only saw a portion of the FISA trail from his review of a Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) previously given to President Obama. Chairman Nunes had to review the PDB at the White House SCIF due to compartmented intelligence, another example of the silo benefit.

Remember the massive stonewalling and blocking of the DOJ/FBI toward Nunes? Remember the back and forth battle over declassification surrounding the Nunes memo?

Remember, after Nunes went directly to House Speaker Paul Ryan for help (didn’t get any), the DOJ only permitted two members from each party within the HPSCI to review the documents, and only at the DOJ offices of main justice?

Contrast that amount of House Intel Committee railroading and blocking by intelligence operatives in the DOJ, DOJ-NSD and FBI, with the simple request by Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Mark Warner asking to see the Carter Page FISA application and immediately a copy being delivered to him on March 17th, 2017.

Can you see which intelligence committee is aligned with the deepest part of the deep state?

Oh, how quickly we forget:

The contrast of ideological alignment between the House, Senate and Intelligence Branch is crystal clear when viewed through the prism of cooperation. You can see which legislative committee holds the power and support of the Intelligence Branch. The Senate Intel Committee facilitates the corrupt existence of the IC Branch, so the IC Branch only cooperates with the Senate Intel Committee. It really is that simple.

• The Intelligence Branch carefully selects its own members by controlling how security clearances are investigated and allowed (FBI). The Intelligence Branch also uses compartmentalization of intelligence as a way to keep each agency, and each downstream branch of government (executive, legislative and judicial), at arm’s length as a method to stop anyone from seeing the larger picture of their activity. I call this the “silo effect“, and it is done by design.

I have looked at stunned faces when I presented declassified silo product from one agency to the silo customers of another. You would be astonished at what they don’t know because it is not in their ‘silo’.

Through the advice and consent rules, the Intelligence Branch uses the SSCI to keep out people they consider dangerous to their ongoing operations.

Any appointee to the intelligence community must first pass through the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, before they get a full Senate vote. If the SSCI rejects the candidate, they simply refuse to take up the nomination. The president is then blocked from that appointment.

This is what happened with President Trump over-and-over again.

• Additionally, the Intelligence Branch protects itself, and its facilitating allies through the formal classification process. The Intelligence Branch gets to decide unilaterally what information will be released and what information will be kept secret.

There is no entity outside the Intelligence Branch, and yes that includes the President of the United States, who can supersede the classification authority of the Intelligence Branch. {Go Deep} and {Go Deep} This is something 99.9% of the people on our side get totally and frustratingly wrong.

No one can declassify, or make public, anything the Intelligence Branch will not agree to. Doubt this?  Ask Ric Grenell, John Ratcliffe, or even President Trump himself.

• The classification process is determined inside the Intelligence Branch, all by themselves. They get to choose what rank of classification exists on any work-product they create; and they get to decide what the classification status is of any work product that is created by anyone else. The Intelligence Branch has full control over what is considered classified information and what is not. The Intelligence Branch defines what is a “national security interest” and what is not. A great technique for hiding fingerprints of corrupt and illegal activity.

[For familiar reference see the redactions to Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text messages. The Intelligence Branch does all redactions.]

• Similarly, the declassification process is a request by an agency, even a traditionally superior agency like the President of the United States, to the Intelligence Branch asking for them to release the information. The Intelligence Branch again holds full unilateral control. If the head of the CIA refuses to comply with the declassification instruction of the President, what can the president do except fire him/her? {Again, GO DEEP} How does the President replace the non-compliant cabinet member?  They have to go through the SSCI confirmation.  See the problem?

Yes, there are ways to break up the Intelligence Branch, but they do not start with any congressional effort. As you can see above, the process is the flaw – not the solution. Most conservative pundits have their emphasis on the wrong syllable. Their cornerstone is false.

For their own self-preservation, the Intelligence Branch has been interfering in our elections for years. The way to tear this apart begins with STATE LEVEL election reform that blocks the Legislative Branch from coordinating with the Intelligence Branch.

The extreme federalism approach is critical and also explains why Joe Biden has instructed Attorney General Merrick Garland to use the full power of the DOJ to stop state level election reform efforts. The worry of successful state level election control is also why the Intelligence Branch now needs to support the federal takeover of elections.

Our elections have been usurped by the Intelligence Branch. Start with honest elections and we will see just how much Democrat AND Republican corruption is dependent on manipulated election results. Start at the state level. Start there…. everything else is downstream.

♦ People want examples, reference points for work the Intelligence Branch conducts, specifically how it protects itself.

Here is an example: Julian Assange.

Yes, the history of the U.S. national security apparatus goes back decades; however, the weaponization of that apparatus, the creation of an apex branch of government, the Intelligence Branch, originated –as we currently feel it– under President Barack Obama.

Obama took the foundational tools created by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and used the intelligence system architecture to create a weapon for use in his fundamental transformation. An alliance of ideologues within government (intel community) and the private sector (big tech and finance) was assembled, and the largest government weapon was created. Think about this every time you take your shoes off at an airport.

After the weapon was assembled and tested (Arab Spring), the Legislative Branch was enjoined under the auspices of a common enemy, Donald J. Trump, an outsider who was a risk to every entity in the institutional construct of Washington DC. Trillions were at stake, and years of affluence and influence were at risk as the unholy alliance was put together.

To understand the risk that Julian Assange represented to U.S. Intelligence Branch interests, it is important to understand just how extensive the operations of the FBI/CIA were in 2016.

It is within the network of foreign and domestic intel operations where Intelligence Branch political tool, FBI Agent Peter Strzok, was working as a bridge between the CIA and FBI counterintelligence operations.

By now, people are familiar with the construct of CIA operations involving Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese professor generally identified as a western intelligence operative who was tasked by the FBI/CIA to run an operation against Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos in both Italy (Rome) and London. {Go Deep}

In a similar fashion, the FBI tasked U.S. intelligence asset Stefan Halper to target another Trump campaign official, Carter Page. Under the auspices of being a Cambridge Professor, Stefan Halper also targeted General Michael Flynn. Additionally, using assistance from a female FBI agent under the false name Azra Turk, Halper also targeted Papadopoulos.

The initial operations to target Flynn, Papadopoulos and Page were all based overseas. This seemingly makes the CIA exploitation of the assets and the targets much easier.

HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes outlined how very specific exculpatory evidence was known to the FBI and yet withheld from the FISA application used against Carter Page that also mentions George Papadopoulos. The FBI also fabricated information in the FISA.

However, there is an aspect to the domestic U.S. operation that also bears the fingerprints of the international intelligence apparatus; only this time, due to the restrictive laws on targets inside the U.S., the CIA aspect is less prominent. This is where FBI Agent Peter Strzok working for both agencies was important.

Remember, it’s clear in the text messages Strzok had a working relationship with what he called their “sister agency”, the CIA. Additionally, former CIA Director John Brennan has admitted Strzok helped write the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which outlines the Russia narrative; and Peter Strzok wrote the July 31st, 2016, “Electronic Communication” that originated FBI operation “Crossfire Hurricane.” Strzok immediately used that EC to travel to London to debrief allied intelligence officials connected to the Australian Ambassador to the U.K, Alexander Downer.

In short, Peter Strzok acted as a bridge between the CIA and the FBI. The perfect type of FBI career agent for the Intelligence Branch and CIA Director John Brennan to utilize.

Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson hired CIA Open Source analyst Nellie Ohr toward the end of 2015; at appropriately the same time as “FBI Contractors” were identified exploiting the NSA database and extracting information on a specific set of U.S. persons, the 2015 GOP candidates for President.

It was also Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson who was domestically tasked with a Russian lobbyist named Natalia Veselnitskaya. A little reported Russian Deputy Attorney General named Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was working double agents for the CIA and Kremlin. Karapetyan was directing the foreign operations of Natalia Veselnitskaya, and Glenn Simpson was organizing her inside the U.S.

Glenn Simpson managed Veselnitskaya through the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. However, once the CIA/Fusion-GPS operation using Veselnitskaya started to unravel with public reporting… back in Russia Deputy AG Karapetyan died in a helicopter crash.

Simultaneously timed in late 2015 through mid 2016, there was a domestic FBI operation using a young Russian named Maria Butina tasked to run up against republican presidential candidates. According to Patrick Byrne, Butina’s private sector handler [NOTE: remember, the public-private sector partnership], it was FBI agent Peter Strzok who was giving Patrick Byrne the instructions on where to send Butina. {Go Deep}

All of this context outlines the extent to which the FBI/CIA was openly involved in constructing a political operation that eventually settled upon anyone in candidate Donald Trump’s orbit. The international operations of the Intelligence Branch were directed by the FBI/CIA; and the domestic operations were coordinated by Peter Strzok operating with a foot in both agencies. [Strzok gets CIA service coin]

Recap: ♦Mifsud tasked against Papadopoulos (CIA). ♦Halper tasked against Flynn (CIA), Page (CIA), and Papadopoulos (CIA). ♦Azra Turk, pretending to be a Halper asst, tasked against Papadopoulos (FBI). ♦Veselnitskaya tasked against Donald Trump Jr (CIA, Fusion-GPS). ♦Butina tasked against Donald Trump Jr (FBI). All of these activities were coordinated.

Additionally, Christopher Steele was a British intelligence officer, hired by Fusion GPS to assemble and launder fraudulent intelligence information within his dossier. And we cannot forget Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, who was recruited by Asst. FBI Director Andrew McCabe to participate in running an operation against the Trump campaign and create the impression of Russian involvement. However, Deripaska refused to participate.

All of this foreign and domestic engagement was directly controlled by collaborating U.S. intelligence agencies from inside the Intelligence Branch. And all of this coordinated activity was intended to give a specific Russia influence/interference impression.

♦ The key point of all that background context is to see how committed the Intelligence Branch was to the constructed narrative of Russia interfering with the 2016 election. The CIA, FBI, and by extension the DOJ and DOJ-NSD, put a hell of a lot of work into it.

We also know that John Durham looked at the construct of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA); and talked to CIA analysts who participated in the construct of the January 2017 report that bolstered the false appearance of Russian interference in the 2016 election. This is important because it ties into the next part that involves Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

On April 11th, 2019, the Julian Assange indictment was unsealed in the EDVA. From the indictment we discover it was under seal since March 6th, 2018:

(Link to pdf)

On Tuesday April 15th more investigative material was released. Again, note the dates: Grand Jury, *December of 2017* This means FBI investigation prior to….

The FBI investigation took place prior to December 2017, and it was coordinated through the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) where Dana Boente was U.S. Attorney at the time. The grand jury indictment was sealed from March of 2018 until after Mueller completed his investigation, April 2019.

Why the delay?

What was the DOJ waiting for?

Here’s where it gets interesting….

The FBI submission to the Grand Jury in December of 2017 was four months after Congressman Dana Rohrabacher talked to Julian Assange in August of 2017: “Assange told a U.S. congressman … he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents … did not come from Russia.”

(August 2017, The Hill Via John Solomon) Julian Assange told a U.S. congressman on Tuesday he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents he published during last year’s election did not come from Russia and promised additional helpful information about the leaks in the near future.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who is friendly to Russia and chairs an important House subcommittee on Eurasia policy, became the first American congressman to meet with Assange during a three-hour private gathering at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder has been holed up for years.

Rohrabacher recounted his conversation with Assange to The Hill.

“Our three-hour meeting covered a wide array of issues, including the WikiLeaks exposure of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] emails during last year’s presidential election,” Rohrabacher said, “Julian emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails.”

Pressed for more detail on the source of the documents, Rohrabacher said he had information to share privately with President Trump. (read more)

Knowing how much effort the Intelligence Branch put into the false Russia collusion-conspiracy narrative, it would make sense for the FBI to take keen interest after this August 2017 meeting between Rohrabacher and Assange, monitor all activity, and why the FBI would quickly gather specific evidence (related to Wikileaks and Bradley Manning) for a grand jury by December 2017.

Within three months of the EDVA grand jury, the DOJ generated an indictment and sealed it in March 2018.

The DOJ sat on the indictment while the Mueller/Weissmann probe was ongoing.

KEY POINT: The predicate for everything in the Trump-Russia narrative was that Russia hacked the DNC servers. The Robert Mueller special counsel would not have existed except for the justification of the DNC hack by Russia as a predicate reason for the entire “Russian Interference in the 2016 Election” narrative.   The Trump-Russia narrative was the coverup tool for the surveillance and spying against Trump.

As soon as the Mueller/Weissmann probe ended, on April 11th, 2019, a planned and coordinated effort between the U.K. and U.S. was executed; Julian Assange was forcibly arrested and removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and the EDVA indictment was unsealed (link).

As a person who has researched this fiasco; including the ridiculously false 2016 Russian hacking/interference narrative: “17 intelligence agencies”, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) needed for Obama’s anti-Russia narrative in December ’16; and then a month later the ridiculously political Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) in January ’17; this timing against Assange is too coincidental.

It doesn’t take a deep researcher to see the aligned Deep State motive to control Julian Assange. The Weissmann/Mueller report was dependent on Russia cybercrimes for justification, and that narrative was contingent on the Russia DNC hack story which Julian Assange disputes.

♦ This is critical. The Weissmann/Mueller report contains claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers as the central element to the Russia interference narrative in the U.S. election. This claim is directly disputed by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, as outlined during the Dana Rohrabacher interview, and by Julian Assange on-the-record statements.

The predicate for Robert Mueller’s investigation was specifically due to Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The fulcrum for this Russia interference claim is the intelligence community assessment; and the only factual evidence claimed within the ICA is that Russia hacked the DNC servers; a claim only made possible by relying on forensic computer analysis from Crowdstrike, a DNC and FBI contractor.

The CIA holds a self-interest in upholding the Russian hacking claim; the FBI holds an interest in maintaining that claim; the U.S. media hold an interest in maintaining that claim. All of the foreign countries whose intelligence apparatus participated with Brennan and Strzok also have a self-interest in maintaining that Russia hacking and interference narrative.

Julian Assange is the only person with direct knowledge of how Wikileaks gained custody of the DNC emails; and Assange has claimed he has evidence it was not from a hack.

This “Russian hacking” claim was ultimately important to the CIA, FBI, DOJ, ODNI and U.K intelligence apparatus, it forms the corner of their justification. With that level of importance, well, right there is the obvious motive to shut Julian Assange down as soon as intelligence officials knew the Weissmann/Mueller report was going to be public.

…. and that’s exactly what they did. They threw a bag over Assange.

♦ COLLAPSED OVERSIGHT – The modern system to ‘check’ the Executive Branch was the creation of the legislative “Gang of Eight,” a legislative oversight mechanism intended to provide a bridge of oversight between the authority of the intelligence community within the Executive Branch.

The Go8 construct was designed to allow the President authority to carry out intelligence operations and provide the most sensitive notifications to a select group within Congress.

The Go8 oversight is directed to the position, not the person, and consists of: (1) The Speaker of the House; (2) The Minority Leader of the House; (3) The Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, HPSCI; (4) The Ranking Member (minority) of the HPSCI; (5) The Leader of the Senate; (6) The Minority Leader of the Senate; (7) The Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, SSCI; and finally (8) the Vice-Chair of the SSCI.

Example: When the Chief Executive (the President) initiates an intelligence operation on behalf of the United States, the President triggers a “finding memo.” In essence, the instruction to the intel agency or agencies to authorize a covert operation. When that process takes place, the Go8 are the first people notified. Depending on the sensitivity of the operation, sometimes the G08 are notified immediately after the operation is conducted. The notification can be a phone call or an in-person briefing.

Because of the sensitivity of their intelligence information, the Gang of Eight hold security clearances that permit them to receive and review all intelligence operations. The intelligence community are also responsible for briefing the Go8 with the same information they use to brief the President.

~ 2021 Gang of Eight ~

The Go8 design is intended to put intelligence oversight upon both political parties in Congress; it is designed that way by informing the minority leaders of both the House and Senate as well as the ranking minority members of the SSCI and HPSCI. Under the concept, the President cannot conduct an intelligence operation; and the intelligence community cannot carry out intelligence gathering operations without the majority and minority parties knowing about it.

The modern design of this oversight system was done to keep rogue and/or corrupt intelligence operations from happening. However, as we shared in the preview to this entire discussion, the process was usurped during the Obama era. {GO DEEP}

Former FBI Director James Comey openly admitted to Congress on March 20, 2017, that the FBI, FBI Counterintelligence Division, DOJ and DOJ-National Security Division, together with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the CIA, had been conducting independent investigations of Donald Trump for over a year without informing the Go8. Comey justified the lack of informing Go8 oversight by saying, “because of the sensitivity of the matter.”

Stupidly, Congress never pressed James Comey on that issue. The arrogance was astounding, and the acceptance by Congress was infuriating. However, that specific example highlighted just how politically corrupt the system had become. In essence, Team Obama usurped the entire design of congressional oversight…. and Congress just brushed it off.

Keep in mind, Comey did not say the White House was unaware; in fact he said exactly the opposite, he said, “The White House was informed through the National Security Council,” (the NSC). The very direct and specific implication; the unavoidable implication and James Comey admission that everyone just brushed aside, was that President Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, was totally informed of the intelligence operation(s) against Donald Trump. After all, the NSC reports to the National Security Advisor.

That is why Susan Rice’s attorney could never allow her to appear before a congressional inquiry.

Look at that highlighted box from Susan Rice’s lawyer, Kathryn Ruemmler, and remember in his March 20, 2017, testimony Comey said, “The White House was informed through the National Security Council,” (the NSC).

FBI Director James Comey was protecting himself against the spygate surveillance of Trump, by leveraging his prior notification to the White House.  Comey was signaling, ‘you cant get me for spying on Trump without getting Susan Rice and Barack Obama’, who knew about it.

Does the January 20, 2017, Susan Rice memo look different now?

Again, no one saw the immediate issue. What Comey just described on that March day in 2017 was the total usurpation of the entire reason the Gang of Eight exists; to eliminate the potential for political weaponization of the Intelligence Community by the executive branch.

The Gang of Eight notifications to the majority and minority of the legislative branch are specifically designed to make sure what James Comey admitted to doing was never supposed to happen.

Team Obama carried out a political operation using outside contractors and the intelligence community, and the checks-and-balances in the system were intentionally usurped. This is an indisputable fact, and a point highlighted by John Durham’s court filing:

Worse still, the entire legislative branch of Congress, which specifically includes the Republicans that now controlled the House and Senate, did nothing. They just ignored what was admitted to them. The usurpation was willfully ignored.

The mechanism of the G08 was bypassed without a twitch of condemnation or investigation…. because the common enemy was Donald Trump.

This example highlights the collapse of the system. Obama, the executive branch, collapsed the system by usurping the process; in essence the process became the bigger issue, and the lack of immediate legislative branch reaction became evidence of open acceptance.

The outcomes of the usurpation played out over the next four years, Donald J. Trump was kneecapped and lost his presidency because of it. However, the bigger issue of the collapse still exists.

The downstream consequence of the Legislative Branch accepting the Executive Branch usurpation meant both intelligence committees were compromised. Additionally, the leadership of both the House and Senate were complicit. Think about this carefully. The Legislative Branch allowance of the intelligence usurpation meant the Legislative Branch was now subservient to the Intelligence Branch.

That’s where we are.

Right now.

That’s where we are.

Term-3 Obama is now back in the White House with Joe Biden.

Term-1 and Term-2 Obama usurped the ‘check and balance‘ within the system and weaponized the intelligence apparatus. During Trump’s term that weaponization was covered up by a compliant congress, and not a single member of the oversight called it out. Now, Term-3 Obama steps back in to continue the cover up and continue the weaponization.

Hopefully, you can now see the scale of the problem that surrounds us with specific citation for what has taken place. What I just explained to you above is not conspiracy theory, it is admitted fact that anyone can look upon. Yet….

Have you seen this mentioned anywhere?

Have you seen this called out by anyone in Congress?

Have you seen anyone in media (ally or adversary) call this out? Have you seen any member of the Judicial Branch stand up and say wait, what is taking place is not okay? Have you seen a single candidate for elected office point this out? Have you seen anyone advising a candidate to point this out?

This is our current status. It is not deniable. The truth exists regardless of our comfort.

Not a single person in power will say openly what has taken place. They are scared of the Fourth Branch. The evidence of what has taken place is right there in front of our face. The words, actions and activities of those who participated in this process are not deniable.

There are only two members of the Gang of Eight who have existed in place from January 2007 (the real beginning of Obama’s term, two years before he took office when the Congress flipped).

Only two members of the G08 have been consistently in place from January of 2007 to right now, today. All the others came and went, but two members of the Gang of Eight have been part of that failed and collapsed oversight throughout the past 15 years, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell.

♦ TECHNOLOGY – On a global scale – the modern intelligence gathering networks are now dependent on data collection to execute their intelligence missions. In the digital age nations have been executing various methods to gather that data. Digital surveillance has replaced other methods of interception. Those surveillance efforts have resulted in a coalescing of regional data networks based on historic multi-national relationships.

We have a recent frame of reference for the “U.S. data collection network” within the NSA. Through the allied process the Five Eyes nations all rely on the NSA surveillance database (U.K, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and U.S.) The NSA database provides the digital baseline for intelligence operations in defense of our allies. The portals into the NSA database are essentially an assembly of allies in like-minded ideological connection to the United States.

Unfortunately, there have been some revelations about the NSA database being used to monitor our allies, like in the example of Germany and surveillance on Angela Merkel’s phone. As long as “the good guys” are operating honorably, allies of the United States can feel confident about having protection from the NSA surveillance of global digital data. We warn our friends if we detect something dangerous etc.

The U.S. has nodes on communication pipelines to intercept and extract data. We have also launched hundreds, perhaps thousands, of satellites to conduct surveillance and gather up data. All of this data is fed into the NSA database where it is monitored (presumably) as a national security mechanism, and in defense of our allies.

However, what about data collection or data networks that are outside the NSA database? What do our enemies do? The NSA database is just one intelligence operation of digital surveillance amid the entire world, and we do not allow access by adversaries we are monitoring. So what do they do? What do our allies do who might not trust the United States due to past inconsistencies, ie. the Middle East?

The answers to those questions highlight other data collection networks. So a brief review of the major players is needed.

♦ CHINA – China operates their own database. They, like the NSA, scoop up data for their system. Like us, China launches satellites and deploys other electronic data collection methods to download into their database. This is why the issues of electronic devices manufactured in China becomes problematic. Part of the Chinese data collection system involves the use of spyware, hacking and extraction.

Issues with Chinese communication company Huawei take on an added dimension when you consider the goal of the Chinese government to conduct surveillance and assemble a network of data to compete with the United States via the NSA. Other Chinese methods of surveillance and data-collection are less subversive, as in the examples of TicTok and WeChat. These are Chinese social media companies that are scraping data just like the NSA scrapes data from Facebook, Twitter and other Silicon Valley tech companies. [ Remember, the Intelligence Branch is a public-private partnership. ]

♦ RUSSIA – It is very likely that Russia operates their own database. We know Russia launches satellites, just like China and the USA, for the same purposes. Russia is also very proficient at hacking into other databases and extracting information to store and utilize in their own network. The difference between the U.S., China and Russia is likely that Russia spends more time on the hacking aspect because they do not generate actual technology systems as rapidly as the U.S. and China.

The most recent database creation is an outcome of an ally having to take action because they cannot rely on the ideology of the United States remaining consistent, as the administrations ping-pong based on ideology.

♦ SAUDI ARABIA – Yes, in 2016 we discovered that Saudi Arabia was now operating their own intelligence data-gathering operation. It would make sense, given the nature of the Middle East and the constant fluctuations in political support from the United States. It is a lesson the allied Arab community and Gulf Cooperation Council learned quickly when President Obama went to Cairo in 2009 and launched the Islamist Spring (Arab Spring) upon them.

I have no doubt the creation of the Saudi intelligence network was specifically because the Obama administration started supporting radical Islamists within the Muslim Brotherhood and threw fuel on the fires of extremism all over the Arab world.

Think about it., What would you do if you were Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan, Oman or Yemen and you knew the United States could just trigger an internal uprising of al-Qaeda, ISIS and the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood to seek your destruction?

Without a doubt, those urgent lessons from 2009, 2010, 2011 triggered the formation of the Arab Intelligence Network as a network to defend itself with consistency. They assembled the network and activated it in 2017 as pictured above.

♦ Israel – Along a similar outlook to the Arab network, no doubt Israel operates an independent data collection system as a method of protecting itself from ever-changing U.S. politics amid a region that is extremely hostile to its very existence. Like the others, Israel launches proprietary satellites, and we can be sure they use covert methods to gather electronic data just like the U.S. and China.

As we have recently seen in the Pegasus story, Israel creates spyware programs that are able to track and monitor cell phone communications of targets. The spyware would not work unless Israel had access to some network where the phone meta-data was actually stored. So yeah, it makes sense for Israel to operate an independent intelligence database.

♦ Summary: As we understand the United States Intelligence Branch of government as the superseding entity that controls the internal politics of our nation, we also must consider that multiple nations have the same issue. There are major intelligence networks around the world beside the NSA “Five-Eyes” database. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel all operate proprietary databases deploying the same tools and techniques for assembly.

The geopolitical conflict that has always existed has now shifted into a digital battlespace. The Intelligence Agencies from these regions are now operating as the backbone of the government that uses them and has become dependent on them. [<- Reread that].

Once you accept the digital-era intelligence apparatus of China, Russia, Saudi-Arabia, The United States and Israel, are now the primary national security mechanisms for stabilization of government; then you accept the importance of those intelligence operations.

Once you understand how foundational those modern intelligence operations have become for the stability and continuity of those governments…… then you begin to understand just how the United States intelligence community became more important than the government that created it.

♦ Public Private Partnership – The modern Fourth Branch of Government is only possible because of a Public-Private partnership with the intelligence apparatus. You do not have to take my word for it, the partnership is so brazened they have made public admissions.

The biggest names in Big Tech announced in June their partnership with the Five Eyes intelligence network, ultimately controlled by the NSA, to: (1) monitor all activity in their platforms; (2) identify extremist content; (3) look for expressions of Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE); and then, (4) put the content details into a database where the Five Eyes intelligence agencies (U.K., U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand) can access it.

Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft are all partnering with the intelligence apparatus. It might be difficult to fathom how openly they admit this, but they do. Look at this sentence in the press release (emphasis mine):

[…] “The Group will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.”

Think about that sentence structure very carefully. They are “adding to” the preexisting list…. admitting the group (aka Big Tech) already have access to the the intelligence-sharing database… and also admitting there is a preexisting list created by the Five Eyes consortium.

Obviously, who and what is defined as “extremist content” will be determined by the Big Tech insiders themselves. This provides a gateway, another plausible deniability aspect, to cover the Intelligence Branch from any oversight.

When the Intelligence Branch within government wants to conduct surveillance and monitor American citizens, they run up against problems due to the Constitution of the United States. They get around those legal limitations by sub-contracting the intelligence gathering, the actual data mining, and allowing outside parties (contractors) to have access to the central database.

The government cannot conduct electronic searches (4th amendment issue) without a warrant; however, private individuals can search and report back as long as they have access. What is being admitted is exactly that preexisting partnership. The difference is that Big Tech will flag the content from within their platforms, and now a secondary database filled with the extracted information will be provided openly for the Intelligence Branch to exploit.

The volume of metadata captured by the NSA has always been a problem because of the filters needed to make the targeting useful. There is a lot of noise in collecting all data that makes the parts you really want to identify more difficult to capture. This new admission puts a new massive filtration system in the metadata that circumvents any privacy protections for individuals.

Previously, the Intelligence Branch worked around the constitutional and unlawful search issue by using resources that were not in the United States. A domestic U.S. agency, working on behalf of the U.S. government, cannot listen on your calls without a warrant. However, if the U.S. agency sub-contracts to say a Canadian group, or foreign ally, the privacy invasion is no longer legally restricted by U.S. law.

What was announced in June 2021 is an alarming admission of a prior relationship along with open intent to define their domestic political opposition as extremists.

July 26 (Reuters) – A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias, the group told Reuters.

Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so has largely consisted of content from Islamist extremist organizations such as Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos – often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence – and other publications and links flagged by U.N. initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes, adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.

The firms, which include Twitter (TWTR.N) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube, share “hashes,” unique numerical representations of original pieces of content that have been removed from their services. Other platforms use these to identify the same content on their own sites in order to review or remove it. (read more)

The influence of the Intelligence Branch now reaches into our lives, our personal lives. In the decades before 9/11/01 the intelligence apparatus intersected with government, influenced government, and undoubtedly controlled many institutions with it. The legislative oversight function was weak and growing weaker, but it still existed and could have been used to keep the IC in check. However, after the events of 9/11/01, the short-sighted legislative reactions opened the door to allow the surveillance state to weaponize.

After the Patriot Act was triggered, not coincidentally only six weeks after 9/11, a slow and dangerous fuse was lit that ends with the intelligence apparatus being granted a massive amount of power. The problem with assembled power is always what happens when a Machiavellian network takes control over that power and begins the process to weaponize the tools for their own malicious benefit. That is exactly what the installation of Barack Obama was all about.

The Obama network took pre-assembled intelligence weapons we should never have allowed to be created and turned those weapons into tools for his radical and fundamental change. The target was the essential fabric of our nation. Ultimately, this corrupt political process gave power to create the Fourth Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. From that perspective the fundamental change was successful.

Last point, they all knew.  Every person in the DC system, regardless of where they are located in their containment silos, knew what had taken place. They all knew.  No one in DC did not know.  This is the very reason why both parties desperately needed to get Andrew Weissmann and Robert Mueller installed.

The 2017 special counsel, under the guise of a Trump-Russia investigation, WAS THE COVER UP plan.  The intent of the special counsel was to protect all the inside and outside agents across all branches who has been working together against Trump throughout his candidacy and into his presidency.  Not a single elected DC politician did not know this was the intent.

♦ WHAT NOW? There is a way to stop and deconstruct the Intelligence Branch, but it requires some outside-the-box thinking and reliance on the Constitution as a tool to radically change one element within government. In the interim, we must remain focused on the three tiers that we need for success.

• Tier One is “tactical civics” at a local level. Engaged and active citizen participation at the community, city, town and hamlet level of society. This is what might be described as grassroots level, school board level; city council level; county commissioner level.

• Tier Two is “extreme federalism” at a state level. Engaged and active citizen participation through your State House and State Senate representative. This is state level assembly and action demands upon the State House, State Senate and State Governor.

• Tier Three the challenge of “federal offices” on a national level. This is where CTH outlines a singular action that can be taken upstream that allows the first two tiers to retake control over federal offices. This is where we throw the One Ring into the fire of Mordor. {Go Deep}

I am confident that ultimately “We The People” will win.  How we can execute the “One Ring” solution is more challenging; in the interim, tactical civics and extreme federalism are doable right now, in this next 2022 election cycle.