Leaked files show secret UK Syria project boosted Jolani’s HTS 

In the name of building a “moderate opposition,” London established a social service and media network in areas controlled by HTS, benefitting the group it branded as a dangerous Al Qaeda affiliate.

Leaked British intelligence files reviewed by The Grayzone raise grave questions about whether London has aided the rise of Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist group which was proscribed by Western governments until it seized power in Syria this December. 

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has stated it is “too early” to remove HTS from Britain’s list of proscribed terrorist organizations. When the group was added in 2017, its entry stated it should be considered among “alternative names” for Al Qaeda. It was therefore illegal for British government officials to meet with HTS representatives while its status endured.

However, on December 16, British diplomats including Ann Snow, London’s special representative for Syria, convened a summit with Jolani and other HTS leaders in Damascus.

That same day, The Times of London granted Jolani a sympathetic interview, during which he called for an end to Western sanctions on the country, promising Syria would not be a “launchpad for attacks on Israel” under his watch. This followed a fawning BBC profile intended to highlight Jolani’s “rebranding” of HTS. The stage now appears set for HTS’ proscription to be rescinded, and London to recognize the group as legitimate rulers of post-Assad Syria. 

The UK’s embrace of HTS represents the culmination of a long and secretive process which began when the group’s leadership was still closely aligned with Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch, Jabhat Al Nusra, and even the Islamic State. While British intelligence once embarked on a campaign to undermine HTS in opposition-controlled areas of Syria, while cultivating supposedly “moderate” factions, leaked files reviewed by The Grayzone reveal the clandestine efforts wound up strengthening Jolani’s organization, helping pave its path to power. More troublingly, these documents suggest that, contrary to mainstream accounts of the group’s split from Al Qaeda, the pair remain close collaborators in Syria.

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MSM Quietly Acquits Itself with Hushed Admissions of Major White House Coverup

Another one of those bombshell MSM pieces slipped past this week, not far in gravity from the seminal Time exposé about the ‘shadow campaign’ that stole the 2020 election.

This time it dealt with the revelation surrounding Biden’s “diminished” mental capacity, long known to all those around him, and how he was essentially ventriloquized, shielded, and stage managed into an acceptable simulacrum of a ‘president’. Of course, as usual the admissions are made long after the fact, with the damage long done and the MSM shills feeling they can now provocatively milk the revelation when the chance for any accountability has been dissipated and America’s attention redirected elsewhere.

More significantly the article indirectly sheds light on the structure and contours of the deep state and just how the powers that be work behind the scenes to control policy by taking advantage of crises to foment ideal circumstances that can be used to steer events and people in power.

In this case, the article makes direct mention of how Biden’s staff ‘took advantage’ of the Covid era protocols which insulated the president from excessive meetings and contact, stretching the new normal out indefinitely to the present in a way that evoked few real protests yet kept Biden under the thumb of a small claque of inner staff.

And that word—insulated—is an operative one: it’s used in various forms nearly ten separate times in the article, including as title of a subheading, with the very theme consequently being Biden’s total insulation from the outside world, which included members of Congress and Cabinet.

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Former ‘GMA Producer’ Accused of Taking Thousands from Florida Lobbying Firm for ‘Hit Job’ Interviews Sues NPR, Floodlight, and High-Profile Players

Freelance television producer Kristen Hentschel has filed a high-profile lawsuit against a web of powerful individuals and organizations, alleging that a conspiracy led to the destruction of her once-flourishing career.

The ‘Emmy-nominated producer’ accuses Jeffrey Pitts, a former CEO of the controversial consulting firm Matrix LLC, along with public relations powerhouse McNicholas & Associates, and prominent news outlets NPR and Floodlight, of orchestrating a campaign of defamation, false light, and invasion of privacy.

“Plaintiff Kristen Hentschel (“Plaintiff” or “Hentschel”) brings this action against Defendant Jeffrey Pitts (“Pitts”) for tortious interference with business relationships, defamation, false light, and invasion of privacy, against Defendant McNicholas & Associates, Inc. (“McNicholas”) for invasion of privacy and false light, and against Defendants National Public Radio, Inc. (“NPR”) and Floodlight, Inc. (“Floodlight”) for defamation and false light,” according to the court filing obtained by The Gateway Pundit.

Hentschel, who previously worked behind the scenes at ABC News, claims her professional and personal life became collateral damage in a power struggle between Pitts and Matrix’s owner, Joe Perkins.

The allegations center on Pitts, who allegedly “groomed” Hentschel to serve his interests before sacrificing her career to protect high-profile clients, including Florida Power & Light and Florida Crystals.

Hentschel contends that Pitts provided false information to media outlets, resulting in NPR and Floodlight publishing defamatory articles that irreparably damaged her reputation.

The stories, published in late 2022, accused Hentschel of unethical journalism practices, including leveraging her ABC credentials for corporate espionage—a claim she vehemently denies.

The Journalist’s Resource reported that the operations of Matrix LLC, a political consulting firm, and its alleged payments to local news outlets to shape coverage in favor of powerful clients, might have remained undisclosed if not for an anonymous whistleblower who leaked hundreds of internal documents in 2022.

The leaked trove included emails, financial ledgers, and other records that laid bare the firm’s covert tactics.

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UK’s National Weather and Climate Service Caught “Inventing” Data

Britain’s official meteorological service appears to be making up a worrying proportion of its published temperature readings, according to a new investigation. The most serious implication is that science could beis being corrupted in pursuit of green ideology; at the very least, it shows that UK weather-recoding infrastructure is in need of a serious upgrade.

When citizen journalist Ray Sanders made Freedom of Information requests to the Met Office and visited individual stations, he discovered that 103 weather stations, out of 302 sites supplying temperature averages, do not exist. This poses serious questions about how they are being used to collect useful scientific data, which in turn is used to inform climate policy.

For instance, in his English home county of Kent, Sanders observed that half of the eight official Met Office sites are in his words, “fiction.”. While Dungeness station closed in 1986, it apparently keeps on producing rolling temperature averages to the second decimal place of a degree. Like the stations alleged to be at Folkestone, Dover, and Gillingham, it does not have a classification from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), in contrast to various other recognised and listed Met Office sites.

Online inquiries about Dover are redirected to Dover Harbour (Beach)—the “nearest climate station”—yet Dover still manages to provide a full set of rolling 30-year temperature averages. A physical visit to the official site coordinates on Dover beach takes you to a place that would be submerged by the tide on a regular basis.

According to Sanders, the Met Office “declined to advise” him exactly how ‘data’ were being derived from 103 non-existent sites (out a total of 302). He asks

How would any reasonable observer know that the data was not real and simply ‘made up’ by a Government agency?

Demanding an “open declaration” of the likely inaccuracy of existing published data, Sanders hopes “to avoid other institutions and researchers using unreliable data and reaching erroneous conclusions.”

Taking to X, social commentator Toby Young posted:

Shocking evidence has emerged that points to the U.K. Met Office inventing temperature data from over 100 non-existent weather stations. One such ‘ghost’ station, Dungeness, closed in 1986 but still reports “observations”.

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Unearthed Trump Era Video From 2018 Shows Homeland Actress Claire Danes Telling Stephen Colbert the Intelligence Community Allied With Journalists

A video clip resurfaced Tuesday of Homeland actress Claire Danes telling CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert in February 2018 that the “intelligence community was…allying itself with journalists” during its battles with the Trump administration. Homeland ran on Showtime, starting during the Obama administration in 2011 and ending in 2020 during Trump’s first term.

Danes told Colbert that each year during the show’s run the cast, writers and producers would spend a week in Washington, D.C. for a “spy camp” with “real spooks”, meeting at a Georgetown club with people from the intelligence community, the State Department and the media.

Danes said the relationship between the Trump administration and the intelligence community soured at the start of 2017 (“there wasn’t great faith in the very beginning”) and that the spooks started allying with journalists. (Note: The alliance started earlier with the 2016 Russia hoax Steele Dossier and the early January 2017 intel-fed Washington Post hit that helped to take out Trump’s first national security advisor, Gen. Michael Flynn.)

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Bombshell Photos Reveal Joe and Hunter Biden’s Ties to Chinese Officials

It’s hardly news that Joe Biden is a liar. And lately, he’s actually being called out for it. After repeatedly denying he would pardon his son Hunter, he went ahead and did it anyway—as anyone could have predicted. Another lie he repeated often was that he never discussed business deals with Hunter. 

The evidence proving he was lying has been out there for a long time now, but new photos released this week further undermine Joe’s claims. 

The National Archives released a series of photos showing Joe Biden, during his vice presidency, meeting with Chinese officials and Hunter Biden’s business associates. This release came after mounting pressure from the conservative group America First Legal and raises serious questions about Joe Biden’s repeated denials of involvement in his son’s business dealings.

The photos, taken during a 2013 taxpayer-funded trip to Asia, feature Hunter Biden engaging with high-ranking Chinese officials, including President Xi Jinping and Vice President Li Yuanchao. Joe Biden is also pictured alongside Hunter’s business associates, including Jonathan Li, a Chinese businessman tied to controversial dealings involving the transfer of stealth technology to a blacklisted Chinese military manufacturer. 

These images not only contradict Joe Biden’s claims of ignorance regarding Hunter’s business affairs but also cast a shadow over his role in facilitating these connections during his time in office.

The release of these photos didn’t come easily. According to America First Legal, lawyers for both Joe Biden and Barack Obama worked to prevent their release, particularly before the 2024 election.

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Texas AG Ken Paxton Reveals Multiple Instances of Debanking Amid Political and Legal Challenges

Texas Attorney-General Ken Paxton has spoken at a Turning Point USA event to detail a series of unjust obstacles he has been facing since taking office, one of those being debanking.

According to Paxton, as many as four different banks denied him their services, which was followed by a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lawsuit, attempts to revoke his law license, and an FBI investigation.

This was happening during the last four years of the Biden-Harris Democrat administration, suggesting that the reasons were political, but it went all the way to “a Republican split”: while the state House tried to impeach Paxton – the Senate later acquitted him in the impeachment trial.

The takeaway here is that democratic norms and the principle of due process are at this point considerably compromised and highly vulnerable to political influence.

And Paxton is by no means the only high-profile individual to become the target of debanking. When the new administration took over after President Trump’s first term in office, his wife Melania, and son Barron were denied banking services.

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Top-ranking NYPD officer abruptly resigns amid sexual misconduct allegations

The top uniformed police officer in the New York Police Department has resigned amid allegations he demanded sex from a subordinate in exchange for opportunities to earn extra pay.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch accepted the resignation of Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey Friday night, effective immediately, according to an emailed statement from the department Saturday.

John Chell, the department’s chief of patrol, will take over as interim chief of department and Philip Rivera will assume Chell’s duties as the head of the patrol division, the department said.

The department declined to comment on the allegations against Maddrey other than to say it “takes all allegations of sexual misconduct seriously and will thoroughly investigate this matter.”

A lawyer for his accuser, Lt. Quathisha Epps, said the move was overdue.

“This should have been done a long time ago,” attorney Eric Sanders said by phone Saturday. “This has been years in the making, this kind of behavior. This is not shock for anyone who understands how things work in this department.”

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The Omnibus CR Funding Bill —The WHO Treaty in Disguise

Did you know that the omnibus CR funding bill that GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson put forward would have enshrined a number of aspects of the WHO Treaty into law in America?

Did you know it expanded COVID lockdown law to other diseases? Did you know it reiterated and strengthened laws that provide legal immunity for vaccine manufacturers?

I’m guessing you didn’t because almost no one did but all these things are true and Congressional leadership seems hell bent on bringing it back. While a full evaluation of everything this nightmare does let me offer a few examples of the shadiness as a means of explanation.

Hundreds of pages of this continuing resolution spending bill were dedicated to health policy. Why? The purpose of the bill is to keep the government funded – temporarily – until an actual budget could be passed (I know – ha ha).

Regardless of the likelihood of Congress doing their job and passing a budget, the Republican led House ought to want to pass something minimalistic so that the next Congress and incoming Trump administration can fight for their agenda more fully. Instead, we have major critical provisions everywhere.

While the focus here is on the corrupt health policies included in the bill, it should be noted that there is also a related provision of the bill that would have supported the State Department Global Engagement Center (GEC).

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Scranton Finally Turning on Biden as Officials Demand Removal of His Name from Landmark

President Joe Biden has proudly referenced his roots in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on countless occasions.

But after he pardoned a judge involved in a cash-for-kids program that jailed thousands of juveniles in northeastern Pennsylvania, the Electric City is no longer feeling that spark of love.

The newly elected Pennsylvania Republican State Rep. Brenda Pugh called on officials in Scranton to remove Biden’s name from expressways labeled in his honor after he pardoned former Luzerne County Judge Michael Conahan.

That now-disgraced official was convicted after taking kickbacks in exchange for sending juveniles to jail for committing minor crimes, or committing no crime whatsoever, according to PAHomepage.

Pugh said the fact that Biden pardoned Conahan was a disgrace that merits renaming the “President Joe Biden Expressway,” originally named for the commander-in-chief by the Scranton City Council in 2021.

“Conahan’s conduct is forever a blight on Pennsylvania and is a slap in the face to the victims and their families who deserve justice to be served for his atrocious crimes,” Pugh wrote, per PAHomepage.

“His clemency places complicity and a stamp of approval on his behavior,” she continued. “Children are among the most vulnerable Pennsylvanians. This decision is nothing short of a travesty and his clemency is a miscarriage of justice.”

Pugh is far from the only Pennsylvania official to express concern over the presidential pardon.

Even Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro cringed at the pardon of the corrupt official.

“I’ll offer these thoughts as an outsider, not privy to all the information he looked at, but I do feel strongly that President Biden got it absolutely wrong and created a lot of pain here in northeastern Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said last week, per the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

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