Tag: corruption

Seven times ‘disinformation’ turned out to be just the opposite

At the heart of the second trial to come out of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion probe is a story of disinformation.

Marc Elias, general counsel for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, testified both during a House Intelligence Committee investigation in 2017 and recently during Durham’s ongoing probe that he was the one who hired the opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on then-candidate Donald Trump.

Fusion GPS went on to commission former MI6 agent Christopher Steele to create the infamous “Steele dossier,” which purported to show collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin. It contained several salacious and since-debunked claims about Trump and his alleged ties to Russia.

The federal government infamously used the now-discredited dossier to obtain a warrant to surveil former Trump 2016 campaign aide Carter Page. The Justice Department later admitted the warrant application was full of misinformation and the surveillance warrant should’ve never been approved.

The primary source of the Steele dossier was Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst who’s now on trial as part of Durham’s investigation for allegedly lying to the FBI about his own sources for the information that he provided to Steele.

Federal prosecutors allege that Danchenko, who has pleaded not guilty, fabricated and concealed his sources in conversations with the feds. The trial began in Alexandria, Va. on Tuesday.

The case highlights how potent a weapon disinformation can be in today’s political climate, where falsehoods can slip through the cracks and transform into received truth without the public noticing.

However, it works the other way as well.

Indeed, in the past few years the opposite has more often been the case: Something deemed disinformation ultimately turns out to be true.

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Tim Ryan Took Money From Opioid Distributor Whose Executives Mocked Addicts as ‘Pillbillies’

On the campaign trail, Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic Senate candidate in Ohio, likes to tell voters about his work as co-chair of the Congressional Addiction, Treatment, and Recovery Caucus and to attack pharmaceutical companies for profiting from “getting so many millions of Americans hooked on opiates.” None of that stopped him from accepting money from a political action committee funded by an opioid distributor whose executives mocked addicts as “pillbillies,” a Washington Free Beacon review of campaign finance documents found.

The $1,000 donation came from AmerisourceBergen PAC in November 2019. Emails revealed in 2021 during a lawsuit against the company for its alleged role in the opioid crisis showed AmerisourceBergen’s executives expressing broad contempt for poor whites suffering from addiction, which at the time was largely fueled by pharmaceuticals such as OxyContin.

In one exchange, a senior AmerisourceBergen executive circulated a parody song containing references to “hillbilly heroin,” “a bevy of Pillbillies” and a reference to Kentucky as “OxyContinville.” Another email shared between executives joked about how crackdowns against so-called pill mills—doctors who illegally prescribe opioids to customers—in Florida will lead to a “max [sic] exodus of Pillbillies heading north.” 

The donation could prove to be a political liability for Ryan, a Democrat running in a state that has been inordinately impacted by the opioid crisis. The Associated Press reported earlier this month that opioid distributors donated at least $27,000 to Ryan’s political campaigns since 2007.

At the same time, the AP found, Ryan voted against bills meant to increase funding for anti-opioid initiatives, such as spending packages for addiction treatment. In a statement to the AP, Ryan’s campaign said one of the donors, Cardinal, is a large employer in Ohio.

The Ryan campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

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FDA Withholds Autopsy Results of Those Who Died After COVID Shots

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has refused a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to release the autopsy results of people whose deaths were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) after receiving a COVID-19 shot. The FOIA request was submitted by The Epoch Times newspaper.1

“VAERS is a centralized vaccine reaction reporting system that was among the safety provisions secured by parents of DPT (diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus) vaccine injured children in the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986,” explains Barbara Loe Fisher, co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC). It is jointly operated by the FDA and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).2 3

According to The Epoch Times, the FDA declined to release any autopsy reports of VAERS deaths, even redacted copies, citing FOIA section (8) (A) which allows federal agencies to withhold information from the public if an agency “reasonably foresees that disclosure would harm an interest protected by an exemption,” with the exemption being “personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.

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Homeowners find out their town has promised their houses to big corporation

Eminent domain is the legal concept that government can take people’s private property – with just compensation – when it is needed for a public benefit like a road or a bridge.

But in recent years governments repeatedly have used the scheme to take private property – and then have turned it over to another private owner, and such disputes have come up repeatedly in court.

There’s another fight erupting now.

This time it’s the Institute for Justice that is fighting on behalf of homeowners who live along Burnet Road in Onandaga County, New York.

That’s because county officials – and Micron Technology – have announced plans for the company to build a microchip facility in the White Pine Commerce Park in Clay.

The proposed construction site includes not only parts of the commerce park, which largely has been vacant since the 1990s, but the private properties of multiple homeowners.

“My father built this home, and my family has lived here for decades. I’m not going to sit back and let the county take my family’s home and hand it over to a private corporation,” explained one homeowner, Paul Richer, in a statement released by the IJ.

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Judge dismisses case over FBI raid of 1,400 private safe-deposit boxes and seizure of millions in jewelry and cash

A judge ruled on September 29 that federal agents who raided 1,400 safe-deposit boxes in March 2021 at a private vault company did not violate search and seizure laws, court documents shared with Insider show. 

A lawsuit filed in August alleged the FBI and the US attorney’s office in Los Angeles obtained warrants against US Private Vaults in Beverly Hills, California, by concealing critical details from the judge who approved them. 

In his ruling, District Court Judge R. Gary Klausner found no impropriety in the way the government got or executed the warrants for the raid. He dismissed the class-action suit filed on behalf of the people whose boxes had been seized.

The vault company was shut down following the raid and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder drug money.

Laura Eimiller, a spokesperson for the FBI, told Insider: “Today’s District Court ruling makes it clear that agents investigating criminal activity at US Private Vaults did not mislead the court and affirms the FBI’s position that the investigation was conducted without malice and in a manner consistent with the law, FBI policies and the US Constitution.”

The lawsuit was filed after FBI agents raided the Beverly Hills branch of US Private Vaults, seizing more than $86 million in cash, as well as jewelry and gold from 1,400 safe-deposit boxes. It said owners’ items still had not been returned and that agents misled a judge to get the warrant.

None of the people who owned the boxes has been charged after almost five years of investigating; various agencies concluded “the problem was the business itself,” court documents said.

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THE BBC-TO-NATO PIPELINE: HOW THE BRITISH STATE BROADCASTER SERVES THE POWERFUL

The death of Queen Elizabeth II, where the BBC dropped programming to run endless, wall-to-wall coverage, has underlined the fact to many Britons that the network is far from impartial, but the voice of the state.

The BBC website draped itself in black, printing stories such as “Death of Queen Elizabeth II: The moment history stops,” while BBC News presenter Clive Myrie explicitly dismissed the cost of living and energy crisis wracking the country as “insignificant” compared to the news.

But even before the monarch’s death, the BBC’s reputation was in crisis. Between 2018 and 2022, the number of Britons saying they trusted its coverage dropped from 75% to just 55%. Yet it still remains a giant in media; more than three-quarters of the U.K. public rely on the network as a news source.

However, this investigation will reveal that the BBC has always been consciously used as an arm of the state, with the broadcaster openly collaborating with the U.K. military, the intelligence services and with NATO, all in an effort to shape British and world public opinion.

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Secret Service says Biden Delaware visitor logs don’t exist, report says

The U.S. Secret Service says it cannot find records identifying any visitors to President Joe Biden’s Delaware homes, according to a Freedom of Information Act appeal from the New York Post. Biden has spent approximately one quarter of his presidency at his Delaware residences.

In a letter dated Sept. 27, Secret Service deputy director Faron Paramore said that “the agency conducted an additional search of relevant program offices for potentially responsive records.”

“This search also produced no responsive records,” Paramore claimed. “Accordingly, your appeal is denied.”

Rep. James Comer (R-KY) slammed the Secret Service’s claims and the Biden administration’s ongoing lack of transparency.

“The claim that there are no visitor logs for President Biden’s Delaware residence is a bunch of malarkey,” Comer told The Post. “Americans deserve to know who President Biden is meeting with, especially since we know that he routinely met with [first son] Hunter’s business associates during his time as vice president.”

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When a ‘conspiracy theory’ turns out to be…not a theory

WHEN A ‘CONSPIRACY THEORY’ TURNS OUT TO BE…NOT A THEORY. On Monday, the New York Times published a story about Konnech, a small election software company that has just 27 employees, 21 based in Michigan and six in Australia. The paper reported that Konnech has been the target of “election deniers” who have made it the focus of “a new conspiracy theory about the 2020 presidential election.”

“Using threadbare evidence, or none at all,” the New York Times’s Stuart A. Thompson reported, the “election deniers” said Konnech “had secret ties to the Chinese Communist Party and had given the Chinese government backdoor access to personal data about two million poll workers in the United States.”

In the last two years, the New York Times added, “conspiracy theorists have subjected election officials and private companies that play a major role in elections to a barrage of outlandish voter fraud claims.” But now, “the attacks on Konnech demonstrate how far-right election deniers are also giving more attention to new and more secondary companies and groups.”

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Konnech officials assured the New York Times that “none of the accusations were true.” Thompson reported that employees “feared for their safety” from right-wing violence and that “Konnech’s founder and chief executive, Eugene Yu, an American citizen who immigrated from China in 1986, went into hiding with his family after receiving threatening messages.”

Any reasonable reader would come away with the conclusion that Konnech, an innocent company that makes products to deal with “basic election logistics, such as scheduling poll workers,” has been the target of crazy, and possibly dangerous, conspiracy theories. To press the point, the New York Times used the phrase “conspiracy theory” or “conspiracy theorists” nine times in the article, once in the headline — “How a Tiny Elections Company Became a Conspiracy Theory Target” — seven times in the body of the story, and once in a photo caption. Got it?

Fast forward one day. Twenty-four hours. The New York Times published another story about Konnech, this one headlined, “Election Software Executive Arrested on Suspicion of Theft.” Thompson reported that Yu had been “arrested by Los Angeles County officials in connection with an investigation into the possible theft of personal information about poll workers.”

From the New York Times: “The company has been accused by groups challenging the validity of the 2020 presidential election with storing information about poll workers on servers in China. The company has repeatedly denied keeping data outside the United States, including in recent statements to The New York Times.” And then: The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office “said its investigators had found data stored in China.” And this is from the New York Times on the core of the matter:

Konnech came under scrutiny this year by several election deniers, including a founder of True the Vote, a nonprofit that says it is devoted to uncovering election fraud. True the Vote said its team had downloaded personal information on 1.8 million American poll workers from a server owned by Konnech and hosted in China. It said it obtained the data by using the server’s default password, which it said was ‘password.’ … The group provided no evidence that it had downloaded the data, saying that it had given the information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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