(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.
‘I will not be forced to prove my health to participate in society’
Supermodel Doutzen Kroes said in a defiant social media post that she would not be getting vaccinated for the coronavirus.
Kroes spoke out after a self-imposed six month break from social media. The 36-year-old said that others had inspired her to speak her truth about her stand against forced vaccination.
“I will not be forced to take the shot. I will not be forced to prove my health to participate in society. I will not accept exclusion of people based on their medical status,” Kroes wrote.
“Freedom of speech is a right worth fighting for but we can only solve this united in peace and love!” she added.
“Pass on the torch of hope and love and speak your truth,” she concluded.
The post received more than 342,000 “likes” on Instagram and more than 48,000 comments, many of them critical of her public stance against vaccines.
Among her supporters was fellow superstar model Gisele Bundchen, who chastised those critical of Kroes’ post.
“I can’t believe the hate being directed at her because she expressed her feelings,” wrote Bundchen. “It saddens me to see all the judgment and the lack of empathy in so many people’s hearts. Hate is not the answer.”
Kroes has more than 6.9 million followers on Instagram. She became one of the more successful fashion models after being a lingerie model for Victoria’s Secret.
President Joe Biden announced the first federal vaccine mandate on Sept. 9 after his administration previously said that it was not the role of the executive to issue such mandates. That mandate applies to employees of companies with more than 100 workers.
Although there has been a spike in new cases of the coronavirus in the U.S., the pandemic appears to have plateaued, with the seven-day-average hovering at about 140,000 per day. The previous spike reached a seven-day-average of 250,000 daily cases in January.
Here’s more about the vaccine mandate in the U.S.:
States across the country may potentially have the opportunity to dictate their own abortion laws.
The conservative-led U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in December 2021 that will directly challenge Roe v. Wade.
The Mississippi case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, will challenge the 1973 landmark decision regarding abortion. It had been blocked by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Mississippi enacted the “Gestational Age Act” into state law on March 19, 2018. This law stated that an abortion could not be performed until a physician determined and documented a fetus’s probable gestational age. Abortions were prohibited after 15 weeks except in situations of medical emergencies or severe fetal abnormalities.
NEW: The Supreme Court announces it will hear arguments for the Mississippi abortion law case on December 1st, where justices are asked to overturn Roe v. Wade. pic.twitter.com/lx3YRPlZmT
The Biden administration released a statement to address the upcoming oral arguments. “In the wake of Texas’ unprecedented attack, it has never been more important to codify this constitutional right and to strengthen health care access for all women.”
Former President Donald Trump appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, all elected to against hearing an emergency request for an abortion law that was taking place in Texas. The Texas law, “The Heartbeat Act,” restricts abortion up to six weeks of a woman’s pregnancy.
In the situation where the U.S. Supreme Court decides to side with the state of Mississippi, states across the country may potentially have the opportunity to dictate their own abortion laws. This may include include restrictions on abortions – from conception to birth. Current federal law requires states to allow pre-viability abortions, which are abortions that happen about 20 weeks.
Backlash against Biden’s sweeping COVID vaccine mandate has been swift, and experts say the mandate is unlikely to hold up in court.
Story at-a-glance:
In his presidential campaign, Joe Biden promised he would not impose vaccine mandates. Sept. 9, Biden issued an executive order mandating all U.S. companies with 100 or more employees to require COVID vaccination or weekly testing, or face federal fines of up to $14,000 per violation.
Biden is also requiring all federal employees and federal contractors to get the shots. Postal workers and members of Congress and their staff just happen to have been made exempt from this requirement.
No exceptions for persons who have already had COVID and recovered, and therefore have antibodies to the virus, have been issued. Several lawsuits are underway by people who have natural immunity and don’t need or benefit from the mandated COVID shots.
The Republican National Committee has announced they will sue the Biden administration for issuing an unconstitutional mandate.
While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted full approval to Comirnaty, that product is not yet available. The only Pfizershot currently available, called BNT162b2, remains under emergency use authorization, and the two differ widely in their legal liabilities.
Sept. 9, in a sweeping executive order, president Joe Bidenmandated all U.S. companies with 100 or more employees to require COVID vaccination or weekly testing, or face federal fines of up to $14,000 per violation. Biden also ordered businesses to give time off to employees to receive the injections.
Biden is also requiring all federal employees and federal contractors to get the shots. For unspecified reasons, postal workers and members of Congress and their staff are exempt from the vaccine mandate.
Biden did not make any exceptions for persons who have already had COVID and recovered, and therefore have antibodies to the virus.
He also said he’d use his “power as president” against any governor unwilling to follow the order “to get them out of the way.” Biden may be biting off more than he can chew, however, because as of Sept. 11, 2021, 28 states were already pushing back against federal vaccine mandates.
Many states vow to fight back unconstitutional mandate
The backlash was swift. The Republican National Committee quickly announced they would sue the Biden administration for issuing an “unconstitutional mandate.” GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel issued a statement:
“Joe Biden told Americans when he was elected that he would not impose vaccine mandates. He lied. Now small businesses, workers, and families across the country will pay the price.
“Like many Americans, I am pro-vaccine and anti-mandate. Many small businesses and workers do not have the money or legal resources to fight Biden’s unconstitutional actions and authoritarian decrees, but when his decree goes into effect, the RNC will sue the administration to protect Americans and their liberties.”
“President Biden is so desperate to distract from his shameful, incompetent Afghanistan exit that he is saying crazy things and pushing constitutionally flawed executive orders.
“This is a cynical attempt to pick a fight and distract from the President’s morally disgraceful decision to leave Americans behind Taliban lines on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. This isn’t how you beat COVID, but it is how you run a distraction campaign — it’s gross and the American people shouldn’t fall for it.”
In a series of tweets, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem stated:
“South Dakota will stand up to defend freedom @JoeBiden see you in court,” and “My legal team is standing by ready to file our lawsuit the minute Joe Biden files his unconstitutional rule. This gross example of federal intrusion will not stand.”
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp also issued a statement saying he intends to “pursue every legal option available” to halt Biden’s “blatantly unlawful overreach,” as did Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, who in a tweet stated:
“This is exactly the kind of big government overreach we have tried so hard to prevent in Arizona — now the Biden-Harris administration is hammering down on private businesses and individual freedoms in an unprecedented and dangerous way. This will never stand up in court.
“This dictatorial approach is wrong, un-American and will do far more harm than good. How many workers will be displaced? How many kids kept out of classrooms? How many businesses fined? The vaccine is and should be a choice. We must and will push back.”
Florida governments face fines if following Biden’s order
In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis countered Biden’s edict with one of his own. Any local government that makes COVID vaccination a requirement for employment will be fined $5,000 per violation. During a Sept.13 press conference, DeSantis said:
“We are gonna stand for the men and women who are serving us. We are going to protect Florida jobs. We are not gonna to let people be fired because of a vaccine mandate.
“You don’t just cast aside people who have been serving faithfully over this issue, over what’s basically a personal choice on their individual health. We cannot let these folks be cast aside. We cannot allow their jobs to be destroyed.”
I was going to include DeSantis’ speech in this article, but it has since been deleted for “violating YouTube’s community guidelines.” Imagine that, that they would actually remove a legally elected governor’s opinion on this topic because it violates their authoritarian tyranny.
Biden is clearly out of legal bounds
Biden’s executive order is unlikely to stand up in court, seeing how federal law prohibits the mandating of emergency use products, which by definition are experimental. As noted in a May report by The Defender:
“The bottom line is this: mandating products authorized for Emergency Use Authorization status (EUA) violates federal law as detailed in the following legal notifications.
“All COVID vaccines, COVID PCR and antigen tests, and masks are merely EUA-authorized, not approved or licensed, by the federal government. Long-term safety and efficacy have not been proven.
“EUA products are by definition experimental, which requires people be given the right to refuse them. Under the Nuremberg Code, the foundation of ethical medicine, no one may be coerced to participate in a medical experiment. Consent of the individual is ‘absolutely essential.’
“Earlier this year, Mary Holland, Children’s Health Defense president and general counsel, and attorney Greg Glaser stated that federal law prohibits employers from mandating EUA COVID vaccines (or EUA COVID-19 tests or masks). Holland and Glaser wrote:
“‘If a vaccine has been issued EUA by the FDA, it is not fully licensed and must be voluntary. A private party, such as an employer, school or hospital cannot circumvent the EUA law, which prohibits mandates. Indeed, the EUA law preventing mandates is so explicit that there is only one precedent case regarding an attempt to mandate an EUA vaccine.’”
If you’re like most, you’re probably thinking, “Well, Biden’s executive order came after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave full approval to the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID shot Comirnaty, so the vaccine is not under EUA.” You’d be partially right. But mostly wrong.
The difference between Pfizer’s BNT162b2 shot and Comirnaty
The FDA did indeed give full approval to Comirnaty, but that product is not predicted to be available for over a year. The only Pfizer shot currently available, called BNT162b2, remains under EUA. We have the FDA to thank for this unusual and befuddling situation, but the key take-home is that while approval has been granted to Comirnaty, that product is not obtainable.
The FDA wants BNT162b2 to be viewed as interchangeable with Comirnaty, but from a legal standpoint they clearly are not identical. BNT162b2, being under EUA, is indemnified against financial liability, whereas Comirnaty, once it becomes available, will not have that liability shield (unless Pfizer/BioNTech manage to get liability shielding for that product before its release).
In other words, if you’re injured by the BNT162b2, your only recourse is to apply for compensation from the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Act (CICP). Compensation from CICP is very limited and hard to get. In its 15-year history, it has paidout just 29 claims, fewer than 1 in 10.
You only qualify if your injury requires hospitalization and results in significant disability and/or death, and even if you meet the eligibility criteria, it requires you to use up your private health insurance before it kicks in to pay the difference.
There’s no reimbursement for pain and suffering, only lost wages and unpaid medical bills. This means a retired person cannot qualify even if they die or end up in a wheelchair. Salary compensation is of limited duration, and capped at $50,000 a year, and the CICP’s decision cannot be appealed.
If normal circumstances apply to Comirnaty, were you to be injured by that injection, you’d be able to sue for damages under the national Vaccine Injury Compensation Plan, so from a legal perspective, there’s a rather significant difference between these two products.
Legal notifications you can use
If your employer or school requires you to get a COVID shot, consider using the legal notifications provided by the Children’s Health Defense legal team. The notices inform employers and educational institutions that they are violating federal law.
Three separate notices are available for download from the Children’s Health Defense Legal Resources page — one for mask mandates, one for PCR testing and a third for vaccines. There, you can also find information on how to request a religious exemption for COVID-19 vaccine mandates in the workplace.
Vaccine mandate heralds communist-style social credit system
In a Sept. 13, episode of Fox News’ Fox & Friends, co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy warned that vaccine mandates are “the beginning of the communist-style social credit system,” adding:
“Dr. Anthony Fauci is now saying that if you don’t have the vaccine, you shouldn’t be able to have air travel. I mean, this happens in China. In China … if you don’t agree with the government, you can’t get on a train. They block you. They have a way to do that, and this is the beginning of that system where if you’re a dissident, if you don’t agree with the party in power, you will be punished.”
Are we rushing toward a social credit system where behavior is either rewarded or punished based on the whims of those in charge of the system? Biden’s refusal to make exceptions for those with natural immunity, who by no stretch of the imagination actually need or benefit from a COVID shot, seems to indicate we’re definitely heading that way.
Giving people with natural immunity a health passport won’t work for the technocratic elite because the naturally immune aren’t on a vaccine subscription. The whole point of having a vaccine passport is that you lose your freedom every time a new booster rolls out. You either get the booster or lose your freedom.
People with natural immunity can’t be roped into this control scheme. What are they going to force the naturally immune to do in order to keep a valid passport? They can’t make money off natural immunity, and they can’t use it to control.
In a Sept. 13, letter to Biden, Consumer Brands Association CEO Geoff Freeman listed 19 of 50 questions received from its member companies. Among those questions is whether Biden’s executive order includes religious or medical exemptions, including exemption due to natural immunity.
As reported by Newsweek, details of Biden’s plan will be ironed out by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), but in the meantime, Freeman called on the Biden administration to address some of the most pressing questions.
OSHA lets employers off the hook for vaccine injuries
Speaking of OSHA, in May the agency quietly revoked the requirement for employers who mandate the vaccine to record side effects as a work-related event. By doing so, OSHA relieved itself and employers from having to pay out workers’ comp if an employee is injured by a mandated COVID shot. OSHA tried to justify its decision, stating:
“OSHA does not wish to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving COVID-19 vaccination, and also does not wish to disincentivize employers’ vaccination efforts.
“As a result, OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904’s recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects from COVID-19 vaccination through May 2022. We will reevaluate the agency’s position at that time to determine the best course of action moving forward.”
People with natural immunity turn to the law
In the days ahead, our justice system is bound to clog up with lawsuits against employers, schools and governments alike. Law professor Todd Zywicki recently sued George Mason University in Virginia over their vaccine mandate, as he has natural immunity. Zywicki discussed his lawsuit in an Aug. 6, Wall Street Journal commentary.
His lawsuit pointed out that people with natural immunity have an increased risk of adverse reactions to the COVID shot — according to one study up to 4.4 times the risk of clinically significant side effects — and that the requirement violates due process rights, the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment, and is noncompliant with the Emergency Use Authorization.
Aug. 17 George Mason University caved before the case went to trial and granted Zywicki a medical exemption. Unfortunately, the school did not revise its general policy.
A number of other lawsuits have also been filed, including one by more than a dozen students and Children’s Health Defense against Rutgers University in New Jersey, and one by six Oregon workers who are suing the state on grounds that they already have natural immunity.
We filed a lawsuit in federal court Monday along with 18 students against Rutgers University its board of governors, Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway + others over university’s decision to mandate COVID vaccines for students attending school in fall.https://t.co/6D5WNQ6sds
The plaintiffs include two corrections officers, an EMT, a medical office manager, a school bus driver and a special agent in charge of an Oregon Department of Justice investigatory unit.
Jason Dudash, director of the Oregon chapter of the Freedom Foundation, which is representing the state employees, accused Oregon Gov. Kate Brown of becoming “power-hungry amid the pandemic.” “The courts must establish a more logical, science-based approach,” he said.
Military service members sue over vaccine mandate
Military service members with natural immunity are also suing the Department of Defense, the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services. As reported by The Defender:
“The lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Staff Sergeant Daniel Robert and Staff Sergeant Holli Mulvihill, allege U.S. Sec. of Defense Lloyd Austin ignored the DOD’s own regulations and created an entirely new definition of ‘full immunity’ as being achievable only by vaccination.
“According to the lawsuit, the military’s existing laws and regulations unequivocally provide the exemption the plaintiffs seek under Army Regulation 40-562 (‘AR 40-562’), which provides documented survivors of an infection a presumptive medical exemption from vaccination because of the natural immunity acquired as a result of having survived the infection …
“Dr. Admiral Brett Giroir, HHS assistant secretary, stated in an interview Aug. 24 with Fox News: ‘So natural immunity, it’s very important … There are still no data to suggest vaccine immunity is better than natural immunity. I think both are highly protective.’
Yet on the same day, Austin issued a memo mandating the entire Armed Forces be vaccinated, in which he wrote: ‘Those with previous COVID-19 infection are not considered fully vaccinated.’
“In that memo, plaintiffs allege Austin created a new term and concept, which contradicts the plain language of DOD’s own regulations, long-standing immunology practice, medical ethics and the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence regarding this specific virus.
“Plaintiffs claim Austin, who is not a doctor, changed the DOD’s own regulation without providing ‘a scintilla of evidence to support it.’ They also allege Austin made the regulation change without going through the required rulemaking process, in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act review.”
The lawsuit also points out that Pfizer’s Phase 3 trials, which is the phase in which long-term side effects are detected, won’t be completed until 2023. Moreover, the lawsuit highlights the fact that Pfizer unblinded the two cohorts in the middle of the trial and eliminated the control group by offering the real “vaccine” to all controls.
In so doing, Pfizer turned the study from a placebo-controlled blinded trial into an open observational study, and the FDA allowed it. Observational studies carry nowhere near the same weight as placebo-controlled trials, as you don’t have anything to compare the treatment group against. It’s very easy to overlook even severe injuries when you have no control group.
Fauci warns there will be ‘many more vaccine mandates’
As we approach the two-year mark of this pandemic, it’s time for our judicial system to kick in and protect the public. The emergency powers granted to governors are not supposed to last forever, and the rights afforded us by the U.S. Constitution were never intended to be suspended and tossed aside in times of medical crises. It’s time this rampant lawlessness got reined in.
Whether or not that will happen remains to be seen. What we can be sure of is that if our legal system fails to do its duty, the beacon of freedom in this world will be lost. As reported by CNN, Fauci is out there warning that “if more people aren’t persuaded to get vaccinated by messaging from health officials and ‘trusted political messengers,’ additional mandates from schools and businesses may be necessary.”
The technocratic elite will take it all the way because they are fighting for the Great Reset. And the Great Reset won’t work if people are free. They need leverage over the population, which is precisely what vaccine passports are all about.
Jacobson v. Massachusetts: A ruling with tragic consequences
In closing, those who support the mandating of experimental COVID shots will typically point to the 1905 Jacobson v. Massachusetts case, which is often interpreted as giving government the right to force vaccinate everyone for the common good. However, as noted by Alex Berenson in a recent blog post, we ought to really look at the time at which that verdict was given.
In the years surrounding the 1905 Jacobson v. Massachusetts verdict, the U.S. Supreme Court also ruled in favor of racial discrimination, corporate monopoly, child labor and making questioning government a jailable offense. That same year, in 1905, they ruled workers have no rights. In 1923, they ruled minimum wage laws are illegal and in 1927 they OK’d forced sterilization based on the Jacobson ruling.
Most of these rulings have since been overturned, and for obvious reasons. Most people don’t agree with racial discrimination, monopolies and child labor anymore. Most agree that minimum wage laws are a good thing, and that questioning government is an unassailable right that is necessary for democracy to work. The 1905 Jacobson v. Massachusetts case is no different. It was made in and for a different time, when individual and human rights were routinely quashed.
As noted by National Vaccine Information Center president Barbara Loe Fisher in “How Fear of a Virus Changed Our World”:
“Using bad logic and bad science while leaning heavily on the pseudo-ethic of utilitarianism, state governments were given the green light to legally require vaccination based on a ‘common belief’ that vaccination is safe and effective, rather than proven fact.
“Piously waving the greater good flag to justify throwing civil liberties out the door, the court majority ruled that citizens do not have a legal right to be free at all times because there are ‘manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subjected for the common good’ …
“But the justices also warned that mandatory vaccination laws should not be forced on a person whose physical condition would make vaccination ‘cruel and inhuman to the last degree.’ They said:
‘’We are not to be understood as holding that the statute was intended to be applied in such a case or, if it was so intended, that the judiciary would not be competent to interfere and protect the health and life of the individual concerned. ‘All laws,’ this Court has said, ‘should receive a sensible construction’ …
“During this time of fear and confusion, the Jacobson ruling also reminds us that it is democratically elected representatives in state legislatures who make public health laws governing people living in different states. That is because what is not defined in the U.S. Constitution as a federal activity is reserved for the states, which is an important check on federal government power.
“Elected lawmakers in your state can choose to mandate a few or many vaccines with or without exemptions, while the federal government has the authority to mandate vaccinations for people entering the U.S. or crossing state borders.”
Fed’s Powell signaled last month tapering could begin later this year
The Federal Reserve signaled at the conclusion of its two-day meeting this week that it could soon start slowing its aggressive bond-buying program, the first step that policymakers will take to dialing back pandemic-era support for the U.S. economy.
If the economy continues making progress toward the U.S. central bank’s goals on inflation and employment, “the committee judges that a moderation in the pace of asset purchases may soon be warranted,” the Federal Open Market Committee said in its post-meeting statement, released Wednesday.
The Fed continued to hold interest rates at the rock bottom level where they have sat since March 2020, when COVID-19 forced an unprecedented shutdown of the nation’s economy. It also committed to keep purchasing $120 billion in bonds each month, a policy known as “quantitative easing” that’s designed to keep credit cheap. Officials have signaled that reducing bond purchases will be the first step the Fed takes in returning to a more normal policy setting.
Officials have signaled that slowing bond purchases will be their first step toward a more normal policy setting.
But updated economic projections released by the Fed show that officials expect to raise rates once, to about 0.5%, by 2022, sooner than they anticipated in May. At the time, the median official did not expect to move rates until 2023. Now, nine of the 18 Fed officials at the meeting said they expect to start lifting rates sometime in 2022. All but one official penciled in a rate hike in 2023.
Policymakers also raised headline inflation expectations to 3.7% this year – almost a full point higher than the May forecast, when Fed officials projected it would hit 3%.
The Fed’s preferred inflation measure, the personal consumption expenditures excluding food and energy prices, surged 3.6% in July, the highest level in 30 years. Chairman Jerome Powell has repeatedly called the spike “transitory” and said that he expects consumer prices to fall as pandemic-induced bottlenecks subside.
For months, the U.S. central bank has been grappling with how to manage the exit from the ultra-easy monetary policies put in place in March 2020 without triggering a market sell-off. Even though inflation has been running well above the Fed’s preferred target of 2%, there are still 8.4 million unemployed Americans.
Powell told reporters in the post-meeting press conference that tapering “could come as soon as the next meeting,” which takes place Nov. 2-3. Still, he clarified that tapering will not necessitate an immediate rate liftoff, and left the possibility that the Fed may wait longer if needed.
“The timing and pace of the coming reduction in asset purchases will not be intended to carry a direct signal regarding the timing of interest rate liftoff,” he said.
Documents published by a scientist group probing Covid-19’s origins reveal that controversial US non-profit EcoHealth Alliance had sought $14 million in 2018 for a project that would expose Chinese bats to altered coronaviruses.
Some 18 months before the first Covid cases appeared, the three-and-a-half year study had planned to release skin-penetrating particles containing “novel chimeric spike proteins” from bat coronaviruses into bat caves in China’s Yunnan province. The goal was to study and prevent transmission to humans.
The proposal, titled ‘Project Defuse’, was submitted by EcoHealth Alliance for funding consideration as part of an initiative aimed at preventing emerging pathogen threats by the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). It was ultimately rejected over safety concerns.
The documents were released this week by DRASTIC – a web-based investigative team of scientists from around the world. The group claimed to have obtained the documents from an unidentified whistle-blower.
EcoHealth President Peter Daszak, a British zoologist, is listed as the person in charge of Project Defuse, which would have been a collaborative effort with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and a number of US universities, along with the US Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center and the Palo Alto Research Center.
Earlier this month, investigative news outlet The Intercept revealed that federal agencies, including the US National Institutes of Health, granted EcoHealth Alliance a total of $3.1 million – with nearly $600,000 used in part to “identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans” at the WIV.
According to the Telegraph, the documents released this week by DRASTIC were apparently confirmed to be genuine by a former member of the Trump administration. They indicate that researchers were looking to tailor bat coronaviruses to target “human-specific cleavage sites”. This would make it easier for the virus to get into human cells.
In a statement, DRASTIC said the proposal’s “discussion of the planned introduction of human-specific cleavage sites” indicated that a closer review by the “wider scientific community of the plausibility of artificial insertion is warranted.”
Although DARPA’s ‘Biological Technologies Office’ rejected the project since it would “potentially involve ‘Gain of Function’ research” without assessing the risks of such, it left the door open for future funding since there were “several components of great interest” in the proposal.
In response to a verification request from a news outlet, DARPA stated that it has “never funded directly, nor indirectly as a subcontractor, any activity or researcher associated with the EcoHealth Alliance or WIV.”
The documents do not present any conclusive evidence to support the disputed theory that Covid-19 was leaked from a Chinese lab, but they further highlight the fact that US agencies had expressed interest in risky research into bat coronaviruses in the years leading up the pandemic.
Earlier this year, World Health Organization (WHO) experts spent around a month in China and concluded in a report that cases identified in Wuhan in 2019 were believed to have been acquired from “a zoonotic source, as many [of those initially infected] reported visiting or working in the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market.”
However, US skepticism over that report had prompted calls for another probe by the UN health body. In July, the WHO called for a second stage of investigations, which would include “audits of relevant laboratories and research institutions” in Wuhan. But China’s vice health minister, Zeng Yixin, countered that the plan showed “disrespect for common sense and arrogance towards science.”
A top advisor to several Chinese Communist Party-affiliated think tanks as well as the New York-based Asia Society gave a “stern warning” to those opposing a Chinese Communist Party takeover of Taiwan. He suggested the regime will pursue the policy by “whatever means possible.”
Speaking with LBC presenter Matt Frei, Victor Gao declared: “nothing in the world can stand in the way of the unification of China,” adding the goal would be accomplished through “preferably peaceful means, but if not, peaceful means whatever means possible.”
“Unification of China is a must,” he adds.
‘This is a stern warning to whoever in Taiwan who will oppose the reunification,” insists Gao, who is the Vice President of the Chinese Communist Party-linked Center for China and Globalization and an advisor to several other Beijing-linked influence groups such as the Beijing Energy Club and the China Energy Security Institute.
Gao also has a presence in the U.S., serving as a member of the Asia Society’s Global Counsel and a former Vice President at Morgan Stanley Asia.
The National Pulse has previously exposed the Asia Society for influencing curricula and personnel in American schools to align with “social justice” and “globalism,” reaching up to 4,000,000 students and 100,000 educators.
When asked about America’s response to the Chinese Communist Party attempting to overtake Taiwan, Gao cautioned “Wake up, no American leaders who will want to shed blood of American soldiers for the unification of China.”
Biden Security Adviser Jake Sullivan Tied to Alleged 2016 Clinton Scheme to Co-Opt the CIA and FBI to Tar Trump
(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.