Cruz challenges Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats to visit ‘Biden cages’
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz mocked Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her previous visit to a migrant facility, and issued a “simple challenge” to her and her colleagues to visit the “Biden cages” holding migrants amid the border crisis.
“Mr. President, every Democrat who stood up and lamented kids in cages, in the House of Representatives, Representative Ocasio-Cortez, has a famous photo of her grasping her head by the kids in cages,” Cruz said as he imitated the photo. “Well, I’m going to give a simple challenge for Representative Ocasio-Cortez and for every Democrat in this body. Go see the Biden cages with your own eyes.”
Cruz’s comments came during a Senate floor speech on Wednesday regarding the influx of Haitian migrants at the U.S. border with Mexico, with more than 14,000 migrants seen camped under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Cruz called out Democrats for not visiting the border to witness the crisis, while noting they were vocal about migration facilities during the Trump administration.
“Why does Joe Biden refuse to go to the Rio Grande Valley? Because if he goes, the TV cameras will come with him,” Cruz added later in his speech. “Why does Kamala Harris, who’s supposed to be the border czar, she’s supposed to be in charge of this, why won’t she go to the Rio Grande Valley? Because if she went, the TV cameras would come and would show the Biden cages. And the Democrats are counting on the corrupt corporate media to suddenly say nothing to see here. 15,000 Haitians under a bridge in Del Rio. Nothing to see here. Anyone want to know what Joe Biden’s favorite ice cream flavor is? That’s the news!”
Ocasio-Cortez visited a West Texas city housing migrant children in 2018 under the Trump administration, and was photographed standing near fencing, with her hands over her face, appearing visibly upset.
Before @AOC hit the national stage & was just a fairly unknown House candidate frm NYC,she took time awy frm her campaign & came dwn to #Tornillo to protest the #tentcity housing migrant children.I made these previously unpublished fotos a yr ago today. #elpaso#aoc#onassignmentpic.twitter.com/SWyyI1XVt9
“I’ll never forget this, because it was the moment I saw with my own eyes that the America I love was becoming a nation that steals refugee children from their parents,& caged them,” Ocasio-Cortez said on Twitter of the photos.
The New York congresswoman was criticized on social media for the photos, with many describing them as a “photo-op” and “staged.” Her office, however, pushed back on the claims, saying at the time that the allegations are “in no way related to reality or truth.”
It may seem too convenient to be true, but this event actually happened in 2017. The full video follows the article.
Speaking at the 2017 Consortium of Universities for Global Health conference on a panel alongside Anthony Fauci, EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak admitted his controversial “work on coronaviruses in China” was carried out with “funding through” Fauci’s National Institutes of Health agency.
The unearthed conference follows Fauci’s repeated attempts to distance his agency from the controversial New York-based non-profit, which, as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant registry shows, used the money to collaborate with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The National Pulse has previously uncovered footage of Daszak describing the viruses he manipulated as part of his “longtime” collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party-run lab as “killers.”
The 2017 event, the “Healthy People, Healthy Ecosystems” conference hosted by the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH), took place in Washington, D.C. In its description of the conference, CUGH notes that the conference supports its vision for a “world without borders”:
“CUGH believes in a world without borders, because the desire for health and well-being is universal and doesn’t change based on race, ethnicity, national, socioeconomic status, sexual identity, or geographic location.”
The conference’s unearthed agenda reveals the attendance of EcoHealth President Peter Daszak, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci, and Principal Deputy Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Anne Schuchat. The three individuals participated in a panel – “Future of Infectious Disease Pandemics: From Ebola to Zika, and Beyond” – where they discussed pandemic preparedness.
“Although much is known about how to detect and respond to existing infections, more research is needed to predict the likelihood of their emergence and spread, and to improve the precision and timeliness of public health responsiveness,” notes the panel description.
CONFERENCE AGENDA.
During Daszak’s presentation, given with an accompanying slideshow, he states his coronavirus work in China was carried out with “funding” from Fauci’s NIAID along with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) program:
“Working with the USAID EPT PREDICT Program and funding through NIAID to work on coronaviruses in China, we were able to test out this idea of predicting what the next emerging diseases might be. So we’ve all heard of SARS. We know that SARS is carried by civets. Well, actually, the host of SARS-like viruses, the viruses that the SARS coronavirus emerged from are bats.”
– Peter Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance, 2017
“We worked in China to go out and do surveillance in other bat species and say how many other SARS-like viruses are there. Is there something even close to SARS? And sure enough, there was,” he adds.
“We’re now doing surveillance of the people and we’ve found using NIAID funding that actually there is potential of spillover into those peoples,” he reiterates while outlining the global increase of human-animal interaction.
“Even the international grants, the bulk of those funds go through U.S. organizations like ours before we send any abroad,” Daszak answers in response to a question about federal funding posed by Cornell Medicine’s Oliver Fein, who asserts “the worst virus that we presently have is the Trump administration.”
DASZAK DELIVERS HIS ADMISSION.
During the panel, Schuchat, a CDC official, also praises the Chinese Communist Party’s response to China’s first SARS outbreak:
“A key lesson was that cover-ups are not worth it. You may recall the Minister of Health and the Mayor of Beijing were both removed during the SARS epidemic and that being transparent and open with your situation is a lot better.”
– Principal Deputy Director of the CDC, Anne Schuchat
“Beijing did an incredible job of responding once the political level let them respond. They took over the healthcare system,” she adds.
Another panel at the event – “The Global Virome Project: A First Step Toward Ending the Pandemic Era” – featured Daszak and the Chief Scientific Officer of Metabiota, a pandemic tracking and response firm whose lead financial backer was a Hunter Biden-led investment group.
Biden served as Managing Director of Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP), which led the company’s first round of funding worth $30 million.
The panel summary predicts that “over the coming century we will witness spillover from a pool of more than 1,000,000 “unknown” viruses into human populations”:
“The frequency of pandemics is increasing, driven by surging populations, environmental change and globalized trade and travel. Disease outbreaks illustrate that we are ill-prepared to mitigate the impact of a novel virus or prevent its emergence. Only a small proportion of viral threats have been identified. Over the coming century we will witness spillover from a pool of more than 1,000,000 “unknown” viruses into human populations. A global initiative to identify and characterize every significant viral threat circulating in the world is achievable over the next ten years – a critical and essential step towards ending the pandemic era.”
FAUCI.
Both Daszak and Fauci have repeatedly lied about the type of research occurring at the Chinese Communist Party-run lab, as a host of Fauci’s emails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reveal the facility was carrying out “gain-of-function” research and deleted articles reveal the lab worked with live bats despite Daszak stating otherwise.
Daszak, who failed to disclose his extensive ties to the Wuhan lab and the Chinese Communist Party, was recused from the Lancet medical journal’s COVID-19 commission yet still appears on mainstream news networks.
“If we were to follow the scientific method, as it was taught in textbooks … we would immediately see this observation of menstrual cycle changes in tens of thousands of women as a signal, for which necessary questions would need to be asked,” Dr. Lawrence Palevsky told The Defender.
According to an editorial published Sept. 16 in The BMJ, more than 30,000 reports of menstrual irregularities and vaginal bleeding had been made, as of Sept. 2, to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency’s (MHRA) Yellow Card Scheme — the UK system for collecting and monitoring adverse reactions following COVID vaccines.
Reports of adverse reactions include heavier-than-usual periods, delayed periods and unexpected vaginal bleeding. Most women who reported a change to their period after vaccination found it returned to normal the following cycle, according to the author of the editorial, Dr. Victoria Male, a reproductive specialist at Imperial College in London.
Male called for further investigation into potential effects of COVID vaccines on menstrual health — but said the problem lies with the body’s immune response, not the vaccine.
“Menstrual changes have been reported after both mRNA and adenovirus vectored COVID-19 vaccines, suggesting that if there is a connection, it is likely to be a result of the immune response to vaccination rather than a specific vaccine component,” Male wrote.
According to the MHRA, evaluation of Yellow Card reports does not support a link between changes to menstrual periods and COVID vaccines, because the number of reports is low compared to the number of people vaccinated, and the prevalence of menstrual disorders generally.
However, the way in which Yellow Card data are collected makes firm conclusions difficult, according to Male.
According to the most recent data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) — the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. — between Dec. 14, 2020 and Sept. 10, 2021, there have been 8,793 total reports of menstrual disorders after vaccination with a COVID vaccine.
Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events, which means the number of actual adverse events evolving menstrual disorders could be much higher.
In an interview with Medical News Today, Dr. Sarah Gray — a general practitioner who for 15 years who ran a specialist women’s health clinic for the UK’s National Health Service — said:
“The control of menstrual bleeding is complex with potential effects from the brain, ovaries and uterus itself. It is plausible that the effects of [SARS-CoV-2] infection or vaccination on the immune system could affect this control pathway, and any research would be greatly valued.”
Gray also noted, “women’s health has not been a research priority for 20 years and there is much we do not know.”
Dr. Kathryn Clancy, assistant professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said she is involved in similar research into acute immune activation and menstrual repair mechanisms.
“I am dismayed that the research design of [COVID] vaccine trials makes it impossible at this time to actually explore this relationship, and hope drug and vaccine manufacturers in the future take these considerations into account,” Clancy said.
“If we were to follow the scientific method, as it was taught in textbooks (knowing full well there is no longer any adherence to the scientific method), we would immediately see this observation of menstrual cycle changes in tens of thousands of women as a signal, for which necessary questions would need to be asked.”
Palevsky — who is part of an independent research group collecting datafrom unvaccinated women who experienced menstrual changes after being around others who recently received COVID vaccines — said a necessary study would examine the contents of the injection, and assess the chemical natures of these contents and their effects on human physiology and women’s reproductive systems.
“A true adherence to the scientific method would allow for answers to be reported without bias or prejudice for a desired outcome of the results,” Palevsky said.
Palevsky explained:
“There is a long list of side effects that the manufacturers of the injection sent to the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] in the fall of 2020. Many of the injuries people are reporting after receiving these injections, including bleeding, blood clots, autoimmunity, Guillain-Barré syndrome and many others, are well known to the manufacturers and the FDA but, the powers that be continue to ignore the reports of people presenting with these real-time adverse events, as if they have nothing to do with the injections, at all.
“Essentially, they gathered the data in clinical trials but have kept them completely under wraps.”
Palevsky said he believes the spike protein could play a role in the menstrual irregularities women are reporting, along with “other factors we may not know because no one is doing the appropriate research.”
As The Defender reported Sept. 8, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded one-year supplemental grants totaling $1.67 million to five institutions to explore potential links between COVID vaccines and menstrual changes, after thousands of women reported menstrual irregularities after vaccination in the U.S.
According to the NIH website, some women have reported experiencing irregular or missing menstrual periods, heavier-than-usual bleeding and other menstrual changes after receiving COVID vaccines.
The new funding will go toward research to determine whether the changes may be linked to COVID vaccination itself, and how long the changes last. Researchers will also seek to clarify the mechanisms underlying potential vaccine-related menstrual changes.
So far, no published studies have examined — or offered conclusive evidence — of possible links between the vaccines and menstruation.
The Biden administration is seeking to compel banks to report to the IRS any bank account with more than $600 in transactions per year. This proposal is a linchpin of Biden’s American Families Plan, and will supposedly help generate almost $500 billion in federal revenue over the next decade. But previous catch-all financial reporting requirements have helped spur national disasters, complete with pervasive federal looting.
Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) denounced the Biden proposal as a “surveillance dragnet,” a “huge violation of privacy,” and “an egregious abuse of Americans’ right to due process by inferring that all US taxpayers are guilty of evading taxes until proven otherwise.” Paul Merski of the Independent Community Bankers of America warns that the Biden proposal would be “be a historic invasion of financial privacy like we’ve never seen before.” Merski also declared, “The IRS is absolutely incapable of handling or processing this massive amount of new data, and they would admit as much — that’s why they’re asking for an additional $80 billion in this budget.”
Actually, federal money cops have long been overwhelmed by too many reports from banks. Prior federal reporting requirements buried bureaucrats in useless reports and became a de facto Terrorist Hijacker Empowerment Act . The 9/11 attacks were preceded by the biggest failure ever by US financial authorities.
The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 made it a federal crime for banks to keep secrets from the government. This law obliged banks and other financial institutions to submit a currency transaction report (CTR) to the federal government for each cash transaction involving more than $10,000. The feds harvested 17 million CTRs in 2000; federal agencies were flooded with tons of paper that bureaucrats often never bothered to examine. Beginning in 1996, banks were also obliged to file a Suspicious Activity Report on any transaction that “has no business or apparent lawful purpose or is not the sort in which the particular customer would normally be expected to engage.” The feds were soon receiving two hundred thousand suspicious activity reports per year. Greg Nojeim of the American Civil Liberties Union observed, “Congress barred financial institutions from telling their customers that their bank had spied on them by reporting their transactions to the federal government.”
That deluge of reports provided a smokescreen for the 9/11 plotters. A 2002 United Nations report on terrorist financing noted that a “suspicious transaction report” had been filed with the US government over a $69,985 wire transfer that Mohamed Atta, leader of the hijackers, received from the United Arab Emirates. However, the report noted, “this particular transaction was not noticed quickly enough, because the report was just one of a very large number and was not distinguishable from those related to other financial crimes.” Atta was on a terrorist watch list, but the avalanche of other reports the feds received targeting home buyers, boat buyers, and other innocuous transactions provided sufficient cover for the attack to proceed.
Rather than recognize how pointless reporting requirements swamped federal watchdogs, Congress responded to 9/11 by vastly expanding federal financial vacuum cleaners. On October 17, 2001, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) was the only member of the House to oppose the International Money Laundering Abatement and Antiterrorist Financing Act of 2001, which became Title III of the Patriot Act. Paul warned that the bill “has more to do with the ongoing war against financial privacy than with the war against international terrorism” and derided it as “a laundry list of dangerous, unconstitutional power grabs…. These measures will actually distract from the battle against terrorism by encouraging law-enforcement authorities to waste time snooping through the financial records of innocent Americans who simply happen to demonstrate an ‘unusual’ pattern in their financial dealings.”
Paul’s warnings were prescient. The Patriot Act turbocharged reporting requirements, and the feds are now receiving two million “Suspicious Activity Reports” a year. It would be worse than naïve to assume that all the reports that banks send to Washington will sit passively in federal databases.
Financial reporting requirements helped spur one of the most disgraceful federal looting sprees in modern times. The IRS has exploited the technicalities of the Bank Secrecy Act – which requires banks to report any transaction over $10,000 – to preemptively confiscate the bank accounts of innocent Americans. The IRS “enforced” the Bank Secrecy Act by presuming that anyone who deposited slightly less than $10,000 was a criminal. The IRS seized a quarter billion dollars because it disapproved of how businesses and individuals structured their bank deposits and withdrawals. IRS bureaucrats don’t even need to file a criminal charge before snaring citizens’ life savings.
Between 2005 and 2012, the number of IRS seizures for Bank Secrecy Act violations rose more than fivefold, but the vast majority of victims were never criminally prosecuted for structuring offenses. “One-third of those cases involved nothing more than making a series of sub-$10,000 cash transactions,” the Institute for Justice reported. A 2017 Inspector General report found no evidence in 91% of the forfeiture cases that the money came from illegal activities. The IRS chose to seize first, and ask questions later – if at all. IRS investigators simply looked at banking records and then confiscated the accounts of hundreds of people.
Most of the victims were “legal businesses such as jewelry stores, restaurant owners, gas station owners, scrap metal dealers, and others.” The IRS targeted businesses with legal sources of income because “the Department of Justice had encouraged task forces to engage in ‘quick hits,’ where property was more quickly seized… rather than pursuing cases with other criminal activity (such as drug trafficking and money laundering), which are more time-consuming,” the Inspector General reported.
Would the IRS behave as atrociously with a new $600 reporting requirement as it has in the past with the $10,000 reporting requirement in the Bank Secrecy Act? In US Tax Court, IRS determinations of what citizens owe are “presumed correct,” with taxpayers bearing the burden to prove the feds wrong. Corporations with well-fed legal departments routinely defeat the IRS in court but few citizens can afford to fight a federal agency that appears to hold all the cards. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen declared, “Any suggestion that instead this reporting regime will be used to target enforcement efforts on ordinary Americans is wholly misguided.” Then why do the feds want the data on almost anyone with a bank account?
Biden’s new reporting requirement could be the Bitcoin Relief Act of 2021. Forty banking and financial associations sent a letter to Congress on September 17 warning that the Biden proposal “would create tremendous liability for all affected parties by requiring the collection of financial information for nearly every American without proper explanation of how the IRS will store, protect, and use this enormous trove of personal financial information.” American Banking Association president Rob Nichols warns that requiring “banks to police and report on the accounts of customers…will undermine trust in the banking system and erode the progress we have made reducing the number of unbanked and underbanked in the country.”
Facebook confirmed Wednesday that CTO Mike Schroepfer will leave that post next year and become a part-time adviser, while longtime engineering executive Andrew Bosworth will assume the CTO role.
Why it matters: It’s a major leadership shift that has one veteran engineering leader cutting back his involvement and another getting a significant promotion.
What they’re saying: On Facebook, Schroepfer wrote, “This is a difficult decision because of how much I love Facebook and how excited I am about the future we are building together. This change in role will allow me to dedicate more time to my family and my personal philanthropic efforts while staying deeply connected to the company.”
Pfizer revealed that it is using Israel as a special “laboratory” for the evaluation of the COVID vaccine’s effects.
Dr. Philip Dormitzer, Pfizer’s Vice President and Chief Scientist, said in a recording shown on Israel’s Channel 12 on September 10:
“Early in the pandemic, we established a relationship with the Israeli Ministry of Health, where they use exclusively the Pfizer vaccine, and then monitor very closely… A laboratory, where we can see the effect.”
Arad Nir of Al-monitor, who provided the recording, explains that it was captured at an online academic session for invited scientists through Zoom.
Noting that Dr. Dormitzer discussed the decline of Pfizer vaccine’s efficacy in Israel, Nir brought attention to two points made by the Pfizer’s VP.
First, Pfizer continues to refer to Israel as its laboratory in all matters relating to vaccinations, which are considered experimental. Second, contrary to the Israeli Ministry of Health’s statements, Dormitzer asserts that an agreement was reached in which Pfizer’s vaccines would be utilized solely in Israel.
Nir said emphatically that Pfizer should have sought Israeli agreement and authorization to participate in a commercial trial that would be referenced in the United States and across the world.
He also stated that he inquired of Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, director of public health services, why Israel’s people are Pfizer’s captive market.
Alroy-Preis, on the other hand, replied that there was no exclusive arrangement with Pfizer, which contradicted what Pfizer’s VP claimed.
In an analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola published on NOQ Report, he reiterated that Pfizer shot causes an increased risk of heart inflammation among young people compared to some of the other COVID shots. Yet in Israel, young men have no choice but to take the most unsafe dose because of the alleged agreement.
When the Delta strain became prevalent in Israel in late July, Pfizer’s shot’s efficacy dropped from 95% to 39%. Despite apparent vaccine failure, Israel began providing third boosters in late July 2021. Nachman Ash, director general of the Ministry of Health, told Radio 103FM They are still unsure when a fourth dosage may be required, but there is no sign that boosters will be discontinued.
According to Israeli statistics, people who have been fully vaccinated are at greater risk of developing severe disease if they contract SARS-CoV-2 or any of its variants, and they now account for the vast majority of COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths, indicating that vaccine failure is widespread.
This data from Israel’s Health Ministry showed that of the 7,700 new COVID cases in the country, 98% were vaccinated people, while the remaining 2% were from previously infected individuals.
“By contrast, Israelis who were vaccinated were 6.72 times more likely to get infected after the shot than after natural infection, with over 3,000 of the 5,193,499, or 0.0578%, of Israelis who were vaccinated getting infected in the latest wave,” Israel National News reported.
“If there’s a silver lining to this experiment, it’s that Israel at least appears to be far more diligent and transparent in its data collection than the U.S.,” notes Dr. Mercola. “The data coming out of Israel is considered by many to be the best in the world because of their commitment to transparency.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci was questioned in a September 11 CNN interview why those with natural immunity are needed to receive the COVID injection despite the fact that they are likely better protected than “vaccinated” people.
“That’s a really good point…I don’t really have a firm answer for you on that,” he replied.
Dr. Mercola said that, despite Fauci’s pretense of ignorance, it is self-evident that this pandemic may be averted through natural herd immunity.
(Real Clear Investigations) White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan figures prominently in a grand jury investigation run by Special Counsel John Durham into an alleged 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign scheme to use both the FBI and CIA to tar Donald Trump as a colluder with Russia, according to people familiar with the criminal probe, which they say has broadened into a conspiracy case.
Sullivan is facing scrutiny, sources say, over potentially false statements he made about his involvement in the effort, which continued after the election and into 2017. As a senior foreign policy adviser to Clinton, Sullivan spearheaded what was known inside her campaign as a “confidential project” to link Trump to the Kremlin through dubious email-server records provided to the agencies, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Last week, Michael A. Sussmann, a partner in Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of making false statements to the FBI about his clients and their motives behind planting the rumor, at the highest levels of the FBI, of a secret Trump-Russia server. Following a months-long investigation, the FBI found no merit to the rumor.
The grand jury indicated in its lengthy indictment that several people were involved in the alleged conspiracy to mislead the FBI and trigger an investigation of the Republican presidential candidate — including Sullivan, who was described by his campaign position but not identified by name.
The Clinton campaign project, these sources say, also involved compiling a “digital dossier” on several Trump campaign officials – including Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and Carter Page. This effort exploited highly sensitive, nonpublic Internet data related to their personal email communications and web-browsing, known as Internet Protocol, or IP, addresses.
To mine the data, the Clinton campaign enlisted a team of Beltway computer contractors as well a university researchers with security clearance who often collaborate with the FBI and the intelligence community. They worked from a five-page campaign document called the “Trump Associates List.”
The tech group also pulled logs purportedly from servers for a Russian bank and Trump Tower, and the campaign provided the data to the FBI on two thumb drives, along with three “white papers” that claimed the data indicated the Trump campaign was secretly communicating with Moscow through a server in Trump Tower and the Alfa Bank in Russia. Based on the material, the FBI opened at least one investigation, adding to several others it had already initiated targeting the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016.
The indictment states that Sussmann, as well as the cyber experts recruited for the operation, “coordinated with representatives and agents of the Clinton campaign with regard to the data and written materials that Sussmann gave to the FBI and the media.”
One of those campaign agents was Sullivan, according to emails Durham obtained. On Sept. 15, 2016 – just four days before Sussmann handed off the materials to the FBI – Marc Elias, his law partner and fellow Democratic Party operative, “exchanged emails with the Clinton campaign’s foreign policy adviser concerning the Russian bank allegations,” as well as with other top campaign officials, the indictment states.
The sources close to the case confirmed the “foreign policy adviser” referenced by title is Sullivan. They say he was briefed on the development of the opposition-research materials tying Trump to Alfa Bank, and was aware of the participants in the project. These included the Washington opposition-research group Fusion GPS, which worked for the Clinton campaign as a paid agent and helped gather dirt on Alfa Bank and draft the materials Elias discussed with Sullivan, the materials Sussmann would later submit to the FBI. Fusion researchers were in regular contact with both Sussmann and Elias about the project in the summer and fall of 2016. Sullivan also personally met with Elias, who briefed him on Fusion’s opposition research, according to the sources.
Sullivan maintained in congressional testimony in December 2017 that he didn’t know of Fusion’s involvement in the Alfa Bank opposition research. In the same closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, he also denied knowing anything about Fusion in 2016 or who was conducting the opposition research for the campaign.
“Marc [Elias] … would occasionally give us updates on the opposition research they were conducting, but I didn’t know what the nature of that effort was – inside effort, outside effort, who was funding it, who was doing it, anything like that,” Sullivan stated under oath.
Jake Sullivan’s December 2017 House testimony may put him in perjury jeopardy. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Sullivan also testified he didn’t know that Perkins Coie, the law firm where Elias and Sussmann were partners, was working for the Clinton campaign until October 2017, when it was reported in the media as part of stories revealing the campaign’s contract with Fusion, which also produced the so-called Steele dossier. Sullivan maintained he didn’t even know that the politically prominent Elias worked for Perkins Coie, a well-known Democratic law firm. Major media stories from 2016 routinely identified Elias as “general counsel for the Clinton campaign” and a “partner at Perkins Coie.”
“To be honest with you, Marc wears a tremendous number of hats, so I wasn’t sure who he was representing,” Sullivan testified. “I sort of thought he was, you know, just talking to us as, you know, a fellow traveler in this — in this campaign effort.”
Although he acknowledged knowing Elias and his partner were marshaling opposition researchers for a campaign project targeting Trump, Sullivan insisted, “They didn’t do something with it.” In truth, they used the research to instigate a full-blown investigation at the FBI and seed a number of stories in the Washington media, which Elias discussed in emails.
Lying to Congress is a felony. Though the offense is rarely prosecuted, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller won convictions of two of Trump’s associates on charges of that very offense.
An attorney for Sullivan did not respond to questions, while a spokeswoman for the National Security Council declined comment. After the 2016 election, Sullivan continued to participate in the anti-Trump effort, which enlisted no fewer than three Internet companies and two university computer researchers, who persisted in exploiting nonpublic Internet data to conjure up “derogatory information on Trump” and his associates, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors say the operation ran through at least February 2017, when Sullivan met with another central figure in the plot to plant the anti-Trump smear at the FBI. But now the goal was to compel agents to continue investigating the false rumors in the wake of the election, thereby keeping Trump’s presidency under an ethical cloud.
On Feb. 10, 2017, Sullivan huddled with two Fusion operatives and their partner Daniel Jones, a former FBI analyst and Democratic staffer on the Hill, to hatch the post-election plan to resurrect rumors Trump was a tool of the Kremlin. As RealClearInvestigations first reported, the meeting, which lasted about an hour and took place in a Washington office building, also included former Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta. The group discussed raising money to finance a multimillion-dollar opposition research project headed by Jones to target the new president. In effect, Jones’ operation would replace the Clinton campaign’s operation, continuing the effort to undermine Trump.
It’s not clear if Sussmann attended the Feb. 10 meeting, but he was apparently still involved in the operation, along with his crew of data miners. The day before the meeting attended by Sullivan, Sussmann paid a visit to the CIA’s Langley headquarters to peddle the disinformation about the secret server – this time to top officials there, according to the sources familiar with Durham’s investigation. During a roughly 90-minute meeting, Sussmann provided two officials at the intelligence headquarters “updated” documents and data he’d provided the FBI before the election, RealClearInvestigations has learned exclusively.
Then, on March 28, 2017, Jones met with the FBI to pass on supposedly fresh leads he and the cyber researchers had learned about the Alfa Bank server and Trump, and the FBI looked into the new leads after having closed its investigation a month earlier. That same month, FBI Director James Comey publicly announced the bureau was investigating possible “coordination” between Moscow and the newly sworn-in president’s campaign.
Despite the renewed push by Jones, the FBI debunked the tip of a nefarious Russian back channel. Agents learned the email server in question wasn’t even controlled by the Trump Organization. “It wasn’t true,” Mueller confirmed in 2019 testimony.
It turns out that the supposed “secret server” was housed in the small Pennsylvania town of Lititz, and not Trump Tower in New York City, and it was operated by a marketing firm based in Florida called Cendyn that routinely blasts out emails promoting multiple hotel chains. Simply put, the third-party server sent spam to Alfa Bank employees who used Trump hotels. The bank had maintained a New York office since 2001.
“The FBI’s investigation revealed that the email server at issue was not owned or operated by the Trump Organization but, rather, had been administrated by a mass-marketing email company that sent advertisements for Trump hotels and hundreds of other clients,” Durham wrote in his indictment.
Nonetheless, Jones and Sullivan kept promoting the canard as true.
With help from Sullivan and Podesta in 2017, Jones launched a nonprofit group called The Democracy Integrity Project, which raised some $7 million mainly from Silicon Valley tech executives. TDIP hired computer researchers, as well as Fusion opposition researchers and Christopher Steele, the British author of the now-discredited Steele dossier, to “prove” the rumors in the dossier. As they sought new dirt on Trump, they fed their information to media outlets, leading Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee (namely Sens. Mark Warner and Ron Wyden), and the FBI. Jones previously worked on the Senate intelligence panel, which had launched a major investigation of Trump and Russia, and he provided a pipeline of information for the committee, according to the sources.
As RCI first reported, Jones emailed a daily news bulletin known as “TDIP Research” to prominent Beltway journalists to keep the Trump-Russia “collusion” rumor-mill going, including the debunked rumor about the “secret server.” Durham has subpoenaed Jones to testify before his grand jury hearing the case, along with computer experts and researchers recruited by Sussmann for the Clinton campaign project, persons close to the investigation said. Attempts to reach Jones for comment were unsuccessful.
In a statement, Durham said his investigation “is ongoing.”
Indictments for a single-count process crime such as making a false statement normally run a page or two. But Durham’s filing charging Sussmann spans 27 pages and is packed with detail. FBI veterans say the 40-year prosecutor used the indictment to outline a broader conspiracy case he’s building that invokes several other federal statutes.
“That is what we call a ‘speaking indictment,’ meaning it is far more detailed than is required for a simple indictment under [federal statute] 1001,” which outlaws making false statements and representations to federal investigators, former assistant FBI Director Chris Swecker said in an interview with RealClearInvestigations.
“It is damning,” he added. “And I see it as a placeholder for additional indictments, such as government grant and contract fraud, computer intrusion, the Privacy Act and other laws against dissemination of personally identifiable information, and mail fraud and wire fraud – not to mention conspiracy to commit those offenses.”
“I definitely see more [indictments] to come,” emphasized Swecker, who knows Durham personally and worked with him on prior investigations. The sources close to the case said former FBI general counsel James Baker, who accepted the sketchy materials from Sussmann and passed them on to agents for investigation, is cooperating with Durham’s investigation, along with former FBI counterintelligence chief Bill Priestap, who has provided prosecutors contemporaneous notes about what led the bureau to open an investigation into the allegations Trump used Alfa Bank as a conduit between his campaign and Russian President Vladimir Putin to steal the election.
According to the sources, Durham also has found evidence Sussmann misled the CIA, another front in the scandal being reported here for the first time. In December 2016, the sources say Sussmann phoned the general counsel at the agency and told her the same story about the supposed secret server – at the same time the CIA was compiling a national intelligence report that accused Putin of meddling in the election to help Trump win.
Sussmann told Caroline Krass, then the agency’s top attorney, that he had information that may help her with a review President Obama had ordered of all intelligence related to the election and Russia, known as the Intelligence Community Assessment. The review ended up including an annex with several unfounded and since-debunked allegations against Trump developed by the Clinton campaign.
It’s not clear if the two-page annex, which claimed the allegations were “consistent with the judgments in this assessment,” included the Alfa Bank canard. Before it was made public, several sections had been redacted. But after Sussmann conveyed the information to Krass, an Obama appointee, she told him she would consider it for the intelligence review of Russian interference, which tracks with Sussmann’s 2017 closed-door testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. (Krass’ name is blacked out in the declassified transcript, but sources familiar with Sussmann’s testimony confirmed that he identified her as his CIA contact.)
“We’re interested,” said Krass, who left the agency several months later. “We’re doing this review and I’ll speak to someone here.”
It’s not known if Sussmann failed to inform the top CIA lawyer that he was working on behalf of the Clinton campaign, as he’s alleged to have done at the FBI. Attempts to reach Krass, who now serves as Biden’s top lawyer at the Pentagon, were unsuccessful.
But in his return trip to the CIA after the election, Sussmann “stated falsely – as he previously had stated to the FBI general counsel – that he was ‘not representing a particular client,’ ” according to the Durham indictment, which cites a contemporaneous memo drafted by two agency officials with whom Sussmann met that memorializes their meeting. (The document refers to the CIA by the pseudonym “Agency-2.” Sources confirm Agency-2 is the CIA.)
Remarkably, the CIA did not ask for the source of Sussmann’s walk-in tip, including where he got several data files he gave the agency. The FBI exhibited a similar lack of curiosity when Sussmann told it about the false Trump/Alfa Bank connection.
Attempts to reach Sussmann to get his side to the additional CIA allegations leveled by Durham were unsuccessful. The 57-year-old attorney pleaded not guilty to a single felony count and was released on a $100,000 bond Friday. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison.
The prominent Washington lawyer quietly resigned from Perkins Coie, which has scrubbed all references to him from its website. And late last month, as rumors of the indictment swirled, the powerhouse law firm divested its entire Political Law Group formerly headed by Marc Elias – who commissioned the Steele dossier. Elias, who worked closely with Sussmann on the Trump-Alfa Bank project, also is no longer employed by the firm.
Jake Sullivan’s Golf Cart Rounds
In late July 2016, during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, the CIA picked up Russian chatter about a Clinton foreign policy adviser who was trying to develop allegations to “vilify” Trump. The intercepts said Clinton herself had approved a “plan” to “stir up a scandal” against Trump by tying him to Putin. According to hand-written notes, then-CIA chief John Brennan warned President Obama that Moscow had intercepted information about the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016, of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump.” That summer, Brennan had personally briefed Democrats, including then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, on the Alfa Bank-Trump server rumors, according to congressional reports. Reid fired off a letter to Comey demanding that the FBI do more to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia.
During that convention, Sullivan drove a golf cart from one TV-network news tent in the parking lot to another, pitching producers and anchors a story that Trump was conspiring with Putin to steal the election. CNN, ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News, as well as Chris Wallace of Fox News, all gave him airtime to spin the Clinton campaign’s unfounded theories. Sullivan also gave off-camera background briefings to reporters.
“We were on a mission,” Clinton campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri later admitted in a Washington Post column. “We wanted to raise the alarm.”
Then, on the eve of the election, Sullivan claimed in a written campaign statement that Trump and the Russians had set up a “secret hotline” through Alfa Bank, and he suggested “federal authorities” were investigating “this direct connection between Trump and Russia.” He portrayed the shocking discovery as the work of independent experts — “computer scientists” — without disclosing their attachment to the campaign.
“This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow,” Sullivan claimed.
Clinton teed up his statement in an Oct. 31, 2016, tweet, which quickly went viral. Also that day, Clinton tweeted, “It’s time for Trump to answer serious questions about his ties to Russia,” while attaching a meme that read: “Donald Trump has a secret server. It was set up to communicate privately with a Putin-tied Russian bank called Alfa Bank.”
It’s not immediately apparent if then-Vice President Joe Biden was briefed about the Alfa Bank tale or other Trump-Russia rumors and investigations.
Biden has never been questioned about his own role in the investigation of Trump. However, it was the former vice president who introduced the idea of prosecuting Trump’s national security adviser appointee, Gen. Flynn, under the Logan Act of 1799, a dead-letter statute that prohibits private citizens from interfering in U.S. foreign policy and which hasn’t been used to prosecute anyone in modern times. According to notes taken by then-FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok, who attended a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting with Obama and Biden, in which Trump, Flynn and Russia were discussed, Biden raised the idea: “VP: Logan Act,” the notes read.
Although he’s not an attorney, Sullivan has argued in congressional testimony and elsewhere that Flynn violated the Logan Act, raising suspicions he may have put the idea in Biden’s head. Sullivan had advised the vice president before joining the Clinton campaign.
(City News) Every federal election, thousands of mail-in votes fail to arrive in time to be counted, and those people’s voices are not heard.
According to the latest data from Elections Canada, 209,893 of the 1,269,979 voting kits sent to electors were not returned. Last month, Elections Canada said it expected a surge in mail-in voting for the federal election, adding it could take days for every vote to be counted.
Duff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch, was among those who requested a special voting package but never ended up getting one. He says called Elections Canada to report the problem and ultimately went to vote in-person.
The day before the federal election, Elections Canada told NEWS 1130 anyone who had requested a special voting package but had not received one could go in-person to their assigned polling station.
“They’re still on the voter list, and they can vote in person on Monday at their polling place,” Andrea Marantz with Elections Canada said Sunday. “They’ll have to sign an oath that they did not receive (their mail-in ballot), and then they will be allowed to vote.”
Elections Canada cross-checks all mail-in ballots against voter lists to ensure no one voted twice.
Conacher believes many ballots were not returned because people didn’t receive them in time, noting given the COVID-19 pandemic, some voters might not want to physically go to the polls due to health reasons.
“Those are the people who likely didn’t go and vote in person because they couldn’t or didn’t feel safe enough to do it,” he argued. “Those people were thwarted from voting.”
He says Elections Canada should have these figures and should release them.
“If it turns out they were in ridings that were decided by a very close number of votes and their votes could have made a difference to the outcome, then it becomes an more serious problem that has to be avoided the next time around,” he argued.
Related video: Over 5m mail-in ballots ordered, says Elections Canada
Elections Canada told NEWS 1130 it isn’t able to find statistics on the number of people who called to report their special ballot not arriving, nor how many people voted in-person after declaring they had not yet received the package.
“Elections Canada cannot speak to why ballots arrive late or not at all. Historically, there has always been a gap between the number of special ballots issued and the number of special ballots returned. Each elector is responsible for returning their ballot in time for it to be counted,” it states on its website.
Under the Canada Elections Act, the deadline to apply to vote by special ballot in the 2021 federal election was Sept. 14. The completed ballots must have been returned by election day, Sept. 20.
When it came to the 2019 federal election, 55 per cent of national special ballots and 61 per cent of international ballots were returned in time to be counted. Elections Canada says 11.1 per cent of national ballots and 11.8 per cent of international ballots were returned late, and were therefore not counted.
It says 33.9 per cent of national ballots and 27.2 per cent of international ballots weren’t returned at all.
(Christian Today) Christian Concern has expressed its disappointment over reports that Worcester College – part of the University of Oxford – has apologized for hosting its training event.
The Wilberforce Academy is a weeklong residential programme held each year by Christian Concern to equip young Christian students and professionals for public life.
According to The Tab student newspaper, students took issue with Mike Davidson, a counsellor who helps people with unwanted same-sex attraction, being on the guest speaker list for the event.
“Many of us come to uni hoping to be allowed to be ourselves and know we can trust our new community and home,” read an email from students to the college,” the students said in an email to the college.
“But how are we expected to place our trust in somewhere that, if it weren’t for a leaflet being left behind at breakfast, would have left us unaware that they had hosted a group that has consistently aimed to persecute and strip us of our rights for our sexuality, gender and or religion?”
The college has now apologized for “distress” to students and said it will undertake an “urgent review” of their booking process, with the fee from hosting the academy being used to fund “dedicated equality, diversity, and inclusivity initiatives.”
A spokesperson for the college told The Tab, “We deeply regret the distress caused to students, staff and other members of the college community by the presence of the Wilberforce Academy conference.
“The college was not aware of the speaker list or programme content in advance. The booking was taken in good faith, but it is clear that our procedures did not work as they should. We have begun an urgent review to ensure that this does not happen again.”
They added, “We acknowledge that this was a serious failure that has caused significant distress, and we apologize unreservedly to all those who have been affected.”
Responding to the report, Christian Concern CEO Andrea Williams said Oxford University should continue to stand for free speech and free expression, and “allow its students to have the intellectual ability to decide whether they wish to attend external events, and to make up their own minds on what they hear.”
“Sadly, we have had no communication from Worcester college about these reports of an ‘apology’ for hosting us, despite our attempts to contact staff and discuss what has been alleged,” she said.
“But if the college has turned its back on us, it seems that cancel culture has once again demonstrated the power of its grip in one of our top universities, fuelled by a small group of activists who won’t tolerate any view that departs from their own narrow ideology and who will resort to tactics of misrepresentation and sweeping allegations to get their way, seemingly frightening nearly everyone into submission.”
Worcester College is headed up by David Isaac, a former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and previously a chairman of LGBT charity Stonewall.
During his time as equalities chief, Isaac defended free speech on Britain’s campuses in the face of a deplatforming trend, and oversaw the release of EHRC guidance for universities and student unions aimed at protecting freedom of expression.
Ms Williams continued, “That a college now led by someone who has so often claimed to be a defender of freedom of expression in higher education is rumoured to have capitulated to this aggressive movement is even more concerning.
“We very much enjoyed our week at the college, were very warmly welcomed, including by the Provost, received many compliments from the staff and were not aware of any complaints or concerns being raised with us at the time. Yet now we hear it alleged that the college has ‘apologised’ for hosting us.
“We will be seeking urgent clarification. Whatever happens, we will continue to speak of Jesus Christ who was himself an ‘outsider’ and by his words and actions demonstrated his commitment to reaching the marginalised, excluded and vulnerable so that they could discover true hope and everlasting love through him, even sacrificing his own life to do so.”
When I was accepted service in the early morning of September 16th in a bogus January 6th-related civil suit, while on the radio (via cellphone) being interviewed by Jim Hoft of The Gateway Punditand Kell Brazil, for “Real Talk” 93.3 in St. Louis, Missouri, it very quickly became a trending media frenzy.
It reminded me of the pre-dawn hours of January 25, 2019, when 29 heavily armed FBI agents stormed my home to arrest me for the fabricated crime of “lying to Congress,” an act of overreach which shocked the nation and exposed the politically motivated bullying tactics of Mueller and his thugs.
That I was served in a civil lawsuit that was announced weeks ago in which the shady left-wing “Lawyers for Civil Rights Under Law” recruited seven Capitol Hill police officers to file a baseless and abusive lawsuit against President Trump and me claiming, falsely, that we conspired with others to deny the officers their civil rights and to endanger them was neither surprising nor out of the ordinary.
In fact, The Gateway Pundit was the first media organization to expose the continuing, corrupt, baseless, and relentless legal attacks against me and my wife when we lost virtually everything we own and my wife is struggling with stage 4 cancer.
Although The Washington Examiner did at least accurately report my statement that the lawsuit is “baseless, groundless, unsubstantiated and entirely devoid of evidence,” but got other key facts wrong.
In fact, every one of these fake news outlets – the very same news outlets who insisted in a drumbeat of attacks that I colluded with the Russians and collaborated with WikiLeaks to elect Donald Trump for over two years – and who now insist despite the lack of any evidence or proof whatsoever – now insist that I must have been involved in some way in the illegal acts of January 6th. In other words, all of these media outlets acted as if the allegations in this bogus and politically motivated lawsuit are facts. Once again, my name is clickbait for drooling leftists suffering from Stone Derangement Syndrome.
Here are some examples:
WASHINGTON POST: Roger Stone Served ‘a big, big stack of papers’ from Capitol Riot Lawsuit During Radio Interview
USA TODAY: Roger Stone Served with Jan. 6 Capitol Riot Lawsuit During Live Radio Interview
THE INDEPENDENT: Roger Stone Interrupted During Radio Interview to be Served With Jan 6 Lawsuit
YAHOO NEWS: Roger Stone Served in Capitol Riot Lawsuit During Live Interview
NEWSWEEK: Roger Stone Served With Capitol Riots Lawsuit During Radio Interview
THE DAILY BEAST: Roger Stone Interrupted on Live Radio to Be Served With Capitol Riot Lawsuit
THE HILL: Roger Stone Served with Capitol Riot Lawsuit During Radio Interview
THE SEATTLE TIMES: Roger Stone, During Radio Interview, is Served ‘a big, big stack of papers’ From Capitol Riot Lawsuit
SALON: Roger Stone Served Jan. 6 Lawsuit Papers During Live Radio Interview (Salon actually cops to cribbing the story from Raw Story which is like getting it from the sewer!)
RAW STORY: Roger Stone Interrupted During Radio Interview to Get Served Papers for Capitol Riot Lawsuit
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC: Roger Stone Served with Jan. 6 Capitol Riot Lawsuit During Live Radio Interview
In other words, all of these stories – and dozens of more like them-neglect to mention that the lawsuit filed by the Obama-affiliated “Lawyers For Civil Right Under Law” is more of a sensationalized press release. The assertion President Trump and I conspired with others to deny the civil rights of seven Capitol Hill Police Officers and for “endangering” them- is categorically false. Everything I said and did on January 5th fell well within under my First Amendment free speech rights, and I most certainly never urged anyone to hurt anyone else at any time, including January 6th at the US Capitol. I certainly never advocated lawlessness, violence, or insurrection. This lawsuit is based on ‘guilt by association, conjecture, speculation, and lies.
This “lawfare” lawsuit – meaning the filing, for political motivations, of incendiary, clever and sensational charges although devoid of any evidence or proof, but filing in a politically sympathetic jurisdiction, and dragging the matter out in order to generate more bad publicity for the target and force them to pay massive legal fees just to get the frivolous lawsuit dismissed, when the sensationalized lawsuit is dismissed, it will receive no coverage whatsoever from the very same media outlets who gave broad coverage to the filing of the original defamatory charges by the plaintiffs.
The left-wing lawyers and the media are in it together but their actions in this suit are an abuse of the judicial system and they run the very real risk of a Rule 11 Violation ruling against them. I have already won dismissal in two previous harassment lawsuits, one by the left-wing-Obama connected “Project Democracy” and the other by the Democratic National Committee. Both were designed to drain my financial resources at the same time I was seeking to defend myself in the Mueller Investigation
I will not waver in my fight for Justice. Patriots who want to help me in my never-ending struggle with the Deep State can contribute to StoneDefenseFund.com.
Cruz mocks Ocasio-Cortez in Senate floor speech, challenges Dems to ‘go see the Biden cages’
Cruz challenges Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats to visit ‘Biden cages’
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz mocked Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her previous visit to a migrant facility, and issued a “simple challenge” to her and her colleagues to visit the “Biden cages” holding migrants amid the border crisis.
“Mr. President, every Democrat who stood up and lamented kids in cages, in the House of Representatives, Representative Ocasio-Cortez, has a famous photo of her grasping her head by the kids in cages,” Cruz said as he imitated the photo. “Well, I’m going to give a simple challenge for Representative Ocasio-Cortez and for every Democrat in this body. Go see the Biden cages with your own eyes.”
Cruz’s comments came during a Senate floor speech on Wednesday regarding the influx of Haitian migrants at the U.S. border with Mexico, with more than 14,000 migrants seen camped under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Cruz called out Democrats for not visiting the border to witness the crisis, while noting they were vocal about migration facilities during the Trump administration.
“Why does Joe Biden refuse to go to the Rio Grande Valley? Because if he goes, the TV cameras will come with him,” Cruz added later in his speech. “Why does Kamala Harris, who’s supposed to be the border czar, she’s supposed to be in charge of this, why won’t she go to the Rio Grande Valley? Because if she went, the TV cameras would come and would show the Biden cages. And the Democrats are counting on the corrupt corporate media to suddenly say nothing to see here. 15,000 Haitians under a bridge in Del Rio. Nothing to see here. Anyone want to know what Joe Biden’s favorite ice cream flavor is? That’s the news!”
Ocasio-Cortez visited a West Texas city housing migrant children in 2018 under the Trump administration, and was photographed standing near fencing, with her hands over her face, appearing visibly upset.
“I’ll never forget this, because it was the moment I saw with my own eyes that the America I love was becoming a nation that steals refugee children from their parents,& caged them,” Ocasio-Cortez said on Twitter of the photos.
The New York congresswoman was criticized on social media for the photos, with many describing them as a “photo-op” and “staged.” Her office, however, pushed back on the claims, saying at the time that the allegations are “in no way related to reality or truth.”