Tag: secrecy

Judge Cannon Rules Trump Would-Be Assassin Ryan Routh Cannot Access Classified Evidence Government Presented in His Case

Judge Aileen Cannon on Friday ruled that Trump would-be assassin Ryan Routh cannot access the classified evidence that the government presented in his case.

The government presented classified evidence to Judge Cannon and she kept it under seal.

“The United States’ Motion and all accompanying material are hereby SEALED, and shall remain preserved in custody of the Classified Information Security Officer, in accordance with established court security procedures, to made available to the appellate court in the event of an appeal,” Judge Cannon wrote.

It is unclear what the classified evidence is related to, however, it was previously reported that Ryan Routh was flagged by federal agents after he returned from a trip to Ukraine but Biden’s DHS never took any further action.

Ryan Routh traveled to Ukraine and fought for 8 months before returning to the US.

His social media accounts were littered with pro-Ukraine propaganda and he even appeared in a video with the AZOV soldiers.

“Subject is a USC who had traveled to Kiev, Ukraine for 3 months to help recruit Soldiers from Afghanistan, Moldova, and Taiwan, to fight in the Ukrainian war against Russia,” the CBP interview notes said according to Just The News.

“Subject stated that he does not get paid for his recruiting efforts and all his work for the Ukrainian government is strictly volunteer work Subject provided his recruiting business card (cards have been uploaded into the event) which list his recruiting partners that he speaks with to recruit soldiers from Afghanistan, Romanian, Pakistan, Syria, and Israel,” the note added, according to Just The News. “Subject stated that he obtains money from his wife to help fund his trips to Ukraine.”

Last year federal prosecutors charged Ryan Routh with attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate after he pushed the muzzle of his rifle through the fence line at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course.

Ryan Routh was previously charged with two federal gun crimes: Possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession (max penalty of 15 years in prison and $250,000 fine), and receipt of a firearm with an obliterated serial number (max penalty of 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine).

Routh set up a sniper’s nest in the shrubbery outside the perimeter of Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach.

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Leopold Report: FBI FOIA Team Erased High-Profile Names from Epstein Records, Including Trump

President Donald Trump’s name was among those redacted from documents tied to the late Jeffrey Epstein, according to a Friday report by Bloomberg, which cited multiple sources familiar with the FBI’s final review process. The revelation has deepened the divide between federal transparency efforts and growing demands from Trump’s own base for full disclosure of the Epstein files.

The report, authored by veteran investigative journalist Jason Leopold, states that a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) review team inside the FBI combed through thousands of pages tied to the Epstein investigation. The team, according to Leopold, was tasked specifically with removing the names of private individuals, including “prominent public figures” such as Trump, before the documents were released to the public.

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DOJ Files Memorandum in Case to Unseal Epstein and Maxwell Grand Jury Testimony and a Look Into the Cases Cited to Justify Their Release

Yesterday, the Department of Justice filed a Memorandum in Support of Motion regarding the request to unseal the grand jury transcripts from Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s cases in the Southern District of New York.

On July 17th, President Trump posted to Truth Social that he called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce “any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval.”  Bondi filed motions in both the case in Florida from 2008, which has already been denied, followed by the Southern District of New York (SDNY) for both the Epstein case (2019) and the Maxwell case (2021).

Grand jury transcripts are usually held in the utmost confidence, however, in 1997, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the lower court in the SDNY decision denying the unsealing of the grand jury information. The Second Circuit held that “there are certain ‘special circumstances’ in which release of grand jury records is appropriate even outside the boundaries of the rule.”

In the Second Circuit’s ruling, it enumerated a list of “non-exhaustive factors for trial courts to consider when deciding such motions”:

(i) the identity of the party seeking disclosure; (ii) whether the defendant to the grand jury proceeding or the government opposes the disclosure; (iii) why disclosure is being sought in the particular case; (iv) what specific information is being sought for disclosure; (v) how long ago the grand jury proceedings took place; (vi) the current status of the principals of the grand jury proceedings and that of their families; (vii) the extent to which the desired material— either permissibly or impermissibly—has been previously made public; (viii) whether witnesses to the grand jury proceedings who might be affected by disclosure are still alive; and (ix) the additional need for maintaining secrecy in the particular case in question.

In the memorandum filed, the DOJ was asked to “address with specificity these and other factors that the Government views as germane to its application.”  The Court also asked whether “before filing the instant motion, counsel for the Government reviewed the Maxwell grand jury transcripts” and whether they provided notice to the victims.

The Court also asked the DOJ to submit indices of the grand jury material, two complete sets of both the Maxwell and Epstein grand jury transcripts (redacted and unredacted versions), and a description of the grand jury materials, including exhibits.

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Canada’s top research agency sidelines Canadians in a secret hiring practice

An internal audit of the National Research Council (NRC) has uncovered troubling hiring practices that circumvent fairness and transparency, sidelining top Canadian talent.

Over two years, the NRC made at least a dozen “sweetheart appointments” of so-called “top-ranked talent” without posting job vacancies, favouring non-competitive hires in the name of “speed and agility,” as reported by Blacklock’s.

The Audit of Recruitment and Staffing acknowledges the need to attract the “best and brightest” in a competitive global market but warns that bypassing open competition risks undermining trust.

“Circumventing the competitive hiring process should only be considered when candidate availability is extremely limited,” auditors wrote. Yet, the NRC leaned on this tactic 12 times, citing “unique operational requirements” or “urgent needs” without clear justification.

More concerning, the NRC openly prioritized foreign hires, claiming it’s “often not possible to find qualified Canadians” for research roles. In 2021, they even hired consultants to scout international talent, after boasting that Canada had 19 Nobel Laureates, top-tier universities, and $14 billion in annual R&D spending.

Why the rush to look abroad when world-class talent is being cultivated at home?

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LEAK: Pentagon Inspector General Has ‘Evidence’ Hegseth Signal Chat Included Classified Information From Central Command – Pentagon Spox Responds

Another day, another leak.

CNN and The Washington Post on Wednesday reported that sources say the Pentagon Inspector General has ‘evidence’ that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Signal chat included classified information from Central Command.

The Pentagon Inspector General expanded his investigation into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the double-encrypted app Signal in May.

Steven Stebbins took over as Acting Inspector General after President Trump fired the previous IG and 17 other inspectors general.

Stebbins was first appointed to his position in 2015.

Pete Hegseth has been under heavy attack since before his confirmation hearing and the leaks keep coming.

The Pentagon Inspector General expanded his probe following The Wall Street Journal’s reporting on Hegseth’s wife and brother participating in Signal chat groups.

Pete Hegseth was blamed for not noticing Jeffrey Goldberg was added to the Signal chat group with other high-level Trump Administration officials.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell responded to the latest leak in a statement to CNN: “This Signal narrative is so old and worn out, it’s starting to resemble Joe Biden’s mental state. The Department stands behind its previous statements: no classified information was shared via Signal. As we’ve said repeatedly, nobody was texting war plans and the success of the Department’s recent operations–from Operation Rough Rider to Operation Midnight Hammer–are proof that our operational security and discipline are top notch.”

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Spain proposes declassifying secret Franco era files

The Spanish government on Tuesday introduced a bill to automatically declassify all secret government files older than 45 years, including documents from Francisco Franco’s dictatorship and the transition to democracy.

If approved by parliament, the proposed law could shed light on some of Spain’s darkest chapters, including Franco’s ties to Adolf Hitler, the locations of mass graves where victims of his 1939-75 rule were buried, and details of the 1966 Palomares nuclear accident caused by the mid-air collision of two U.S. Air Force planes over a fishing village in southern Spain.

“With this law we will overcome an obstacle in our legislation to put us in line with European standards,” Justice Minister Felix Bolanos told reporters. 

“Citizens have the right to know. Administrations have the obligation to provide documentation that is important for history,” he added.

The bill seeks to replace the existing law governing official secrets, enacted during Franco’s rule, which lacks provisions for automatic declassification based on the amount of time that has passed. 

The law would automatically declassify all documents older than 45 years unless they constituted a justified threat to national security, Bolanos said.

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POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE: DOJ FIRES Maurene Comey, Federal Prosecutor Who Filed Key Court Docs to Keep Epstein Files Under Seal

Maurene Comey, daughter of James Comey, was fired as a federal prosecutor in the Manhattan US Attorney’s office on Wednesday.

It is unclear why Maurene Comey was fired.

“There was no specific reason given for her firing from the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York, according to one of the people who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters,” the AP reported.

Recall that Maurene Comey filed the key court declarations to keep the Epstein files from being released under FOIA.

Maurene Comey was the prosecutor in the 2019 Epstein case, the Ghislaine Maxwell case and the Diddy case.

According to previous reporting by the Washington Post, Maurene Comey was listed as one of the prosecutors who was involved in the ‘deleted’ Epstein prison footage.

Prosecutors in the SDNY rallied around Maurene Comey and escorted her out of the office on Wednesday evening.

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There’s Probably No ‘Smoking Gun’ in the JFK or Epstein Cases. We Should Be Allowed To Look Anyway.

The CIA’s coverup about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is unraveling. Despite the agency denying that it knew anything about assassin Lee Harvey Oswald before the murder, newly declassified documents shed light on the links between Oswald, a Cuban guerrilla group known as the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE), and CIA case officer George Joannides.

Several months before the assassination, Oswald had offered to work for the DRE, a CIA proxy overseen by Joannides. Years later, Joannides—operating under a fake name—became the CIA’s liaison to Congress during a congressional investigation into the assassination. The documents add to a pile of evidence that the CIA had been following Oswald for years and deliberately covered it up afterward.

Oswald “really wasn’t alone, he had the CIA looking over his shoulder for four years,” said Jefferson Morley, a historian who has long pushed for opening the Joannides files, in an interview with The Washington Post.

Decades of dogged investigative work have poked plenty of holes in the official story around Kennedy’s assassination. But they haven’t produced a smoking gun, a single document that demonstrates what the CIA wanted out of Oswald or what knowledge it had about his fatal plans. And that smoking gun may never turn up; Morley and others speculated to the Post that Joannides was running an “off-the-books” operation through the DRE.

The same is likely to be true about another case that’s in the news this week: that of the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. After he died in custody in 2019, calls have grown for the government to release the “Epstein client list.” As I argued several months ago, such a list likely doesn’t exist. What does exist is a scattered patchwork of evidence about the people Epstein associated with and leads waiting to be followed up on.

To be clear, the official story on Epstein has some troubling inconsistencies. Last week, the Department of Justice and FBI released a memo stating that they found “no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions.” But it has been publicly reported that Epstein attempted to extort tech tycoon Bill Gates over Gates’ (legal) extramarital affair.

The Trump administration has not exactly inspired confidence in its transparency or diligence. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in February that bombshell information was “sitting on my desk,” then released a heavily redacted set of documents labeled “Epstein Files: Phase 1,” most of which were already public. Last week, the Department of Justice claimed it would release “raw” surveillance footage from Epstein’s prison wing on the night he died, then published a sloppily compiled video clip with a minute of footage missing.

President Donald Trump himself told his followers on Saturday not to “waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.” (It was a change in tune from last year, when Republican politicians attacked the Democratic administration for not pursuing the Epstein case enough.)

Government coverups rarely involve compiling one document that lays out all the wrongdoing in detail—such as the CIA’s “family jewels” in the 1960s—and hiding it from the public. It makes far more sense for officials to keep the wrongdoing from being put to paper in the first place. Conspirators make informal plans off the record. Internal investigators turn a blind eye to evidence that they think might lead to inconvenient places.

Epstein was only arrested in 2019, after all, because reporting by Julie Brown in the Miami Herald and a lawsuit by victim Virginia Giuffre forced the federal government to reopen the case. Authorities had originally struck a plea deal with Epstein in 2007 that gave him a short prison term along with immunity for any co-conspirators who might come to light.

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UFO Whistleblowers Aim Spotlight at White House Secrecy Machine

In a new interview with podcaster Stephen Diener on 8 July 2025, Representative Burlison said that many Special Access Programs (SAPs) relating to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) “operate directly under the supervision of the White House.”

Sources tell Liberation Times that the drive for secrecy starts inside the White House itself, pushed by career officials who span administrations and work in two offices so sensitive their names cannot be disclosed publicly.

According to those sources, UAP missions are acknowledged at the highest levels of the White House but remain hidden from most Cabinet agencies behind elaborate cover programs. 

If true, the claim suggests UAP missions are far more centralised – and politically sensitive – than previously reported.

One defense source pointed to Dan Sherman’s book ‘Above Black: Project Preserve Destiny’ as a useful primer on how such compartmentalisation works. 

His description of layered secrecy mirrors today’s system, according to the source.

The six layers of secrecy are said to be as follows:

  1. Public layer (Unclassified) – Information released to the public, which may or may not reveal an organisation’s true purpose
  2. Controlled layer (For Official Use Only) – Unclassified data restricted to prevent outsiders from piecing together a sensitive picture
  3. Secret – Material whose unauthorised disclosure could seriously harm national security
  4. Top Secret + code-word compartments – Highly sensitive operations organised under code names
  5. Black missions – Conventional clandestine projects and missions, such as CIA–JSOC efforts to recover foreign hardware. Knowledge is limited to the President and a handful of lawmakers (the “Gang of Eight”)
  6. Programs-within-programs – Genuine UAP activities concealed inside black missions and projects. Even presidents can be kept at arm’s length; probing questions are often deflected with a limited briefing on the outer mission or project.

What has been alleged by whistleblowers, such as former senior intelligence official David Grusch, resembles Sherman’s description. 

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Big Data Centers Are Booming, But Secret Deals Draw Local Opposition

From Georgia to Oregon, New England to New Mexico, data center projects are drawing opposition in local government hearings by residents concerned about the voracious demand for electricity, water consumption, and noise. Critics also argue that data centers don’t produce the jobs other land uses generate.

In Texas, people in small towns question data center development in the broader context of rapid rural industrialization.

In Pennsylvania, ad hoc groups say data centers are tapping into nearby natural gas fields, increasing the frequency of fracking, and straining water supplies.

In Indiana, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, and across the country, residents say the scale and proximity of these high-tech campuses degrade their neighborhoods and devalue properties.

Objections vary, depending on proposal and site, but a common complaint is state and local governments offering data center projects tax incentives that are often shielded from public scrutiny through nondisclosure agreements.

Companies say these pacts shield proprietary corporate intelligence, but the perceived lack of transparency fosters suspicion and anger when residents realize local planners are set to approve a proposal they knew little to nothing about until it appeared to be a done deal.

“Just from our experience, it seems like one of the big concerns is that, yeah, there is no community outreach,” Kamil Cook, Public Citizen’s Texas climate and clean energy associate, told the Epoch Times. “There’s no method by which the community can be informed in a way that actually makes it seem like their voice is valued and that they have a choice in these matters.”

Much of this local opposition appears rooted in the complaint that people “weren’t informed to begin with, were ignored at some point,” said Joe Warnimont, who co-authored a February HostingAdvice.com survey. The survey of 800 people in 16 states found that 93 percent agreed that “cutting-edge AI data centers are vital to the United States,” but only 35 percent want one in their town.

“The main insights are there is clearly a disconnect between what the local residents experience and what is being sold to these communities from developers,” Warnimont told The Epoch Times.

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