Tag: war on whistleblowers

I was punished under the Espionage Act. Why wasn’t Joe Biden?

In February, I was released from federal prison, having served 33 months for a violation of the Espionage Act, after I disclosed classified information detailing what I saw as the high moral cost of America’s drone assassination program. Before having time to adjust to the world beyond concrete walls, I was struck by the news of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report [PDF] wherein he lays out the reasons he decided not to charge President Joe Biden for alleged violations of the same law.

I am always encouraged to hear whenever the Justice Department decides against using the Espionage Act. By the time the ink of the 1917 law had dried, it was already being used to silence voices of dissent across the country. Thousands were rounded up and summarily convicted for their opposition to America’s involvement in the bloodiest conflict in human history at the time.

While some of the worst aspects of the law have since been amended, the Espionage Act remains the premier criminal statute for prosecuting government sources who rely upon the press to expose secret government abuses to the public. The decision by Justice Department officials to go after government whistleblowers with the Espionage Act has been a part of a concerted effort to signal clearly that the next person who dares speak with a reporter could find themselves facing decades of incarceration.

After reading Special Counsel Hur’s report, I was curious to find the similarities between my case and that of the investigation into the president. According to the report, President Biden kept classified information outside of a secure facility at his home and office – as did I. The president later spoke with a reporter about the classified information he retained – again, as did I.

Both President Biden and I expressed to our respective reporters the concerns we had about official US policy – his about the failed 2009 surge in Afghanistan (as vice president) and mine about the consequences of that policy. So why the decision to prosecute one and not the other?

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Suppression of Dissent

The fragile facade of transgender ideology has cracked over the past year. Whistleblowers from within the medical profession have emerged to provide damning evidence that doctors are performing procedures based on shoddy scientific evidence under the label of “gender-affirming care,” as outlined in the WPATH Files and the Cass Review. Former patients who received “gender-affirming” care as adolescents have now detransitioned and are suing the doctors who cut off their breasts and put them on hormones that permanently damaged their bodies. Businesses ranging from Target to NFL teams are scaling back or eliminating Pride-themed merchandise and promotions. The public, too, is increasingly turning against transgender ideology. The tide is shifting.

The Left has adopted a new approach in response: political persecution of those speaking out against trans dogma. Earlier this month, the Department of Justice indicted Eithan Haim, a surgeon at Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) who exposed the hospital’s secret continued use of irreversible sex-change procedures on minors after having publicly stated that it had stopped. By indicting Haim, the DOJ is seeking to silence future whistleblowers and to signal its disregard for the mounting evidence that gender-affirming care is harmful, and often irreversible.

Haim had anonymously sent City Journal’s Christopher Rufo documents proving that doctors at TCH were still prescribing hormone replacement therapy drugs and implanting puberty blockers in minor-age patients more than a year after the hospital announced it had stopped its pediatric gender-affirming care program. A month after Rufo published his article in May 2023, federal agents from the Department of Health and Human Services knocked on Haim’s door to let him know that he was a “potential target” in an investigation of alleged violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This week, an unsealed indictment revealed that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas is charging Haim with four felony counts of violating HIPAA. A press release on the indictment alleges that Haim accessed patient information “under false pretenses and with intent to cause malicious harm to TCH.”

According to a letter written by Haim’s lawyers, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tina Ansari admitted that she hadn’t reviewed the purported evidence against Haim and was instead relying on what FBI agents told her. In the same discussion, Ansari insisted that the documents Haim sent to Rufo included children’s names, but nothing in the documents Rufo saw identified any individuals. All were redacted. The prosecutor then asked Haim to admit wrongdoing, telling him that he should apologize to the families of the children who received transgender medical interventions at TCH if he wanted her to help him avoid a felony prosecution. When this tactic failed, Ansari intimated that the families would sue if she didn’t bring criminal charges.

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Assange Freed, but Supporters Say Guilty Plea a ‘Big Blow to Freedom of the Press’

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange agreed to a plea deal with the U.S. government and was released on bail, leaving Belmarsh maximum security prison and the United Kingdom (U.K.) on Monday morning WikiLeaks announced on X, formerly known as Twitter.

His wife, Stella Assange, an attorney who has worked for years for his release, celebrated the deal on X.

“This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations,” WikiLeaks wrote. “This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalised.”

A federal judge must still approve the plea deal.

Assange is en route to appear Wednesday in a U.S. federal court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands near Australia. He is scheduled to return to Australia after the hearing.

In exchange for his release, Assange agreed to plead guilty to a single felony count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security material in violation of the U.S. Espionage Act, The New York Times reported.

Under the terms of the agreement, Justice Department prosecutors will seek a 62-month sentence, which is equal to the amount of time Assange has served at Belmarsh while he fought his extradition to the U.S. The deal would credit that period as time served, which would allow Assange to return home, according to CNN.

The deal would also disallow him from later making any claim that his long prison time in Belmarsh, where he was confined to a cell for 23 hours a day, was unjust, according to journalist Glenn Greenwald.

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JULIAN ASSANGE IS FINALLY FREE

Julian Assange has agreed to a plea deal with the United States. He left Belmarsh on Monday and is headed to Australia, WikiLeaks said.

“He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK,” WikiLeaks said in a tweet early Tuesday morning London time.   

Stella Assange, tweeted: “Julian is free!!!! Words cannot express our immense gratitude to YOU- yes YOU, who have all mobilised for years and years to make this come true. THANK YOU. tHANK YOU. THANK YOU.”

Assange was released as a result of a plea deal with the United States, the BBC reported. The British national broadcaster said:

“According to CBS, the BBC’s US partner, Assange will spend no time in US custody and will receive credit for the time spent incarcerated in the UK.

Assange will return to Australia, according to a letter from the justice department.

The deal – which will see him plead guilty to one charge – is expected to be finalised in a court in the Northern Mariana Islands on Wednesday, 26 June.” 

The New York Times reported that Assange agreed to the one count of the Espionage Act — “conspiracy to disseminate national defense information” —  in exchange for a five year sentence, which the U.S. agreed had already been served on remand in Belmarsh.

WikiLeaks released this video of Assange walking onto the pane on his way out of London, where he was imprisoned for five years. 

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Wife of Google Whistleblower Killed In Car Crash

Dr. Robert Epstein, on X @DrREpstein, suggests his wife’s 2019 fatal car crash was NOT an accident.

Epstein said that after he briefed a group of state AGs about Google’s power to rig elections, one of them approached him and said, “I think you’re going to die in an accident in a few months.”

His wife died a few months later in a fatal crash that Epstein claims might be connected to his testimony about Google’s search engine bias in US elections.

“They are picking our presidents, our senators, our members of congress, our attorneys general,” Epstein said on The Alex Jones Show in 2023.

Bottom line: If we don’t stop them in the 2024 election, Google alone will be able to shift between 6.4 and 25.5 million votes to one candidate.

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UFO whistleblower says he’s being threatened as congressman warns protections are a ‘joke’

UFO whistleblowers are being threatened, and protections currently in place “are a joke,” a congressman told Fox News Digital. 

Lue Elizondo, who was the head of a secretive Pentagon unit that studied UFOs, said there have been threats against him and “several other whistleblowers formerly associated with the UAP [unidentified anomalous phenomena] effort for the U.S. Government.”

“I would like to make this perfectly clear to the American people. I am not prone to accidents. I am not suicidal. I am not abusing drugs. I am not engaged in any illicit activities,” Elizondo said in a statement to “The Good Trouble Show” on May 15.

“If something happens to me or my family members in the future, you will know what happened.”

Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., who has been one of the lawmakers leading the push for full UFO disclosure, is a personal friend of Elizondo.

“There is whistleblower protection, but it’s a joke, and we know it’s a joke,” Burchett told Fox News Digital. 

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Texas Children’s Hospital Shuts Down Child Sex Change Clinic After FBI Agents Intimidate Whistleblower, AG Lauches Investigation

The ongoing backlash against Texas Children’s Hospital was exacerbated this week after footage showing two FBI agents going to the home of a whistleblower went viral.

Since then the children’s hospital has closed its pediatric sex change clinic, according to a source who spoke with City Journal’s Christopher Rufo.

This decision to close also comes on the heels of a statement from a spokesman for Attorney General Ken Paxton, confirming an investigation into alleged Medicaid fraud at the hospital.

Rufo has been spearheading this story, revealing earlier in the week that special agents Paul Nixon and David McBride appeared outside the home of Vanessa Sivadge.

He reported that Sivadge helped expose an illegal gender program at the hospital after noticing alarming problems like depression, suicide attempts and discomfort with puberty amidst the “dramatic” rise in the number of trans children.

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Boeing CEO admits company retaliates against whistleblowers

At a hearing on Capitol Hill, outgoing Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun admitted the company retaliates against whistleblowers: “I know it happens,” he told members of congress Tuesday.

He acknowledged that the company had retaliated against employees who have raised safety concerns. Before his opening remarks, he stood from the witness table and turned around to apologize to the family members of Boeing 737 Max victims. They were present in the room with photos of their loved ones. Boeing is under intense scrutiny from several regulators after a series of safety missteps earlier this year, including a door plug that blew off an Alaska Airlines flight shortly after takeoff in January.

The context only makes Calhoun’s admission more alarming: two Boeing whistleblowers have died within weeks and a third says they’re afraid. I watched a segment on NBC News last night about the Justice Department considering criminal charges against executives at Boeing, whose cut-cornered 737 MAX jets have killed hundreds of passengers in two crashes and risked the lives many more in a series of high-flying mishaps. I thought it remarkable when the reporter plainly suggested that it won’t happen because Boeing is a key defense contractor, that being self-explanatory.

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Journalist threatened with jail over publishing trans shooter Audrey Hale’s deranged journal writings

A journalist from the Tennessee Star is being summoned to appear in court and faces jail time for publishing journal writings of transgender shooter Audrey Hale, sparking freedom of the press concerns.

The article revealed that Hale, who shot and killed six people at the Covenant Elementary school in March 2023, wrote about her ‘imaginary penis’ and how she would ‘kill’ to get puberty blockers weeks before her horrific act.

For more than a year, Nashville Chancellor I’Ashea Myles has been presiding over a public records case wherein the plaintiffs are suing to get the right to release documents related to the shooting. Families of the victims are on the exact opposite side, trying to bury the documents and keep them out of the public eye.

But since the case in ongoing, Myles is claiming that the Tennessee Star may have published ‘certain purported documents and information’ that should have remained under seal. 

At Myle’s request, Tennessee Star editor-in-chief Michael Patrick Leahy will appear in court Monday to explain why his news outlet didn’t violate the court order.

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Julian Assange Is Being Murdered by a Fake Case that Has No Basis in Law

In the 1970s Pentagon Official Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers. The New York Times published them. It helped to end the war by showing Americans how they had been deceived by Washington. Washington tried to prosecute Ellsberg and the New York Times, but the presiding judge declared a mistrial citing government misconduct so severe as to “offend the sense of justice.”

Four decades later documents were leaked by Manning to Assange at Wikileaks who made them available to the New York Times and The Guardian, both of which published some of the documents, and the leaked information was published by Wikileaks. Assange was not the leaker but had the role of the New York Times in the 1970s. The documents exposed US war crimes and deceptions by Washington of allies.

In the intervening years between Ellsberg and Assange “the sense of justice” has departed the American and British governments and courts. The American and British media whose free speech rights are destroyed by the persecution of Assange actually helped the two corrupt governments to build a public case against Assange. Consequently, the written US Constitution and the unwritten British Constitution have been undermined as protections against vengeful arbitrary actions of governments. Assange has been incarcerated in one form or another for more than a decade in complete violation of habeas corpus. The British play a game of keeping Assange in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison, where he most certainly does not belong, while appeal after appeal plays out. It is a way of imprisoning Assange without convicting and sentencing him.

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