Category U. S. Deep State

Mar 26 2021

DHS Preparing to Use Private Contractors to “Scour Public Data and Social Media” To Compile Dissident Citizens for Watch List and No Fly Lists


Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 25, 2021 | Sundance | 264 Comments

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is now getting ready to hire public companies, individual contractors outside government, to scour public data and social media in order to provide information for the new “domestic terror watch lists.”  From the description it appears DHS is going to pay “big tech” (Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, SnapChat, Twitter, etc.), via contracts, to hire and organize internal monitoring teams to assist the government by sending information on citizens they deem “dangerous.”

Gee, what could possibly go wrong with this?…

NBC is reporting on these new developments as the U.S. intelligence apparatus is preparing to go live with the assembly of lists of Americans who “could be” potential threats to the government; and need to be watched.

However, even NBC is beginning to realize the consequences: “DHS planning to expand relationships with companies that scour public data for intelligence and to better harness the vast trove of data it already collects on Americans. The department is also contemplating changes to its terrorist watch listing process.”

Here’s the article:

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security, created after the 9/11 attacks to protect the country from international terrorism, is moving toward a sweeping set of policy changes aimed at detecting and stopping what intelligence officials say is now a top threat to the homeland: domestic violent extremism.

Two senior Biden administration officials told NBC News that DHS, whose intelligence division did not publish a warning of potential violence before the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, is seeking to improve its ability to collect and analyze data about domestic terrorism — including the sorts of public social media posts that threatened a potential attack on the Capitol, but were not deemed “actionable” by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies.

DHS is planning to expand its relationships with companies that scour public data for intelligence, one of the senior officials said, and also to better harness the vast trove of data it already collects on Americans, including travel and commercial data through Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service and other DHS components. (read more)

Expand your thinking to what was initiated with the COVID model for “contact tracing” and you can quickly see how physical proximity to a rogue dissident, a person with wrong thoughts – aka a domestic extremist, can result in you being labeled along with that dissident…. and you are on the list. Then overlay the efforts of Big Tech to assist the administrative state with an electronic trail of your habits, contacts, phone calls, text messages and internet patterns…. and you are on the list.

Remind yourself what FBI “contractors’ with access to the NSA database already did in their quest for political opposition research and surveillance {Go Deep}. Then overlay all of the above and you get an alarming picture that is not something to dispatch.

Mar 26 2021

Joe Biden Holds His First Press Conference – 1:15pm ET Livestream


Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 25, 2021 | Sundance | 983 Comments

JoeBama will hold his first press conference today as part of the White House defensive effort to present the oval office occupant in charge of the administration. According to earlier media reporting the questions needed to be presented in advance. The highly anticipated start time is 1:15pm ET and many are wondering if Biden will have all his faculties for the effort. [Livestream Links Below]

UPDATE: Video Added

The result was as everyone expected.  On foreign policy questions, Joe Biden had to read from the policy manuscript on everything.  The journalists lobbed softball questions which were known and approved in advance.  Biden had his “angry Joe” moments throughout the appearance.

The result…. no-one really knows who is in charge of this White House and administration; but it surely is not Joe Biden.

PBS Livestream Link – Fox News Livestream – Alternate Livestream – Alternate Livestream

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Mar 25 2021

Sidney Powell – Her Side


Armstrong Economics Blog/Opinion Re-Posted Mar 24, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

As I stated, Sidney Powell’s legal argument was simply that there was no harm even if she had just made up the story, which she states she did not. CNN misrepresented what her brief states:

“Powell, who repeatedly pressed unfounded claims of voter fraud on the airwaves and in court, now says that “reasonable” people would not accept her statements as “fact” because the legal process hadn’t yet played out. It was a stunning admission from a woman who served for a time as one of Trump’s top legal lieutenants.”

CNBC also engaged in Fake News saying “‘no reasonable person’ believes election claims were ‘statements of fact’ when the bref is quoting the legal standard id/p27. The leftist press is cherry-picking words and trying to say that Powell has admitted her statements were false. Nowhere in the brief does she admit such a fact.

I have gotten a copy of her reply brief (read here: Powell Reply Brief) and I must say, Fake News is twisting the story again. The pertinent section reads:

“All the allegedly defamatory statements attributed to Defendants were made as part of the normal

process of litigating issues of momentous significance and immense public interest,”

Reasonable people understand that the “language of the political arena, like the language
used in labor disputes … is often vituperative, abusive and inexact.” Watts v. United States, 394
U.S. 705, 708 (1969). It is likewise a “well recognized principle that political statements are
inherently prone to exaggeration and hyperbole.” Planned Parenthood of Columbia/Willamette,
Inc. v. Am. Coal. of Life Activists, 244 F.3d 1007, 1009 (9th Cir. 2001). Given the highly charged
and political context of the statements, it is clear that Powell was describing the facts on which she
based the lawsuits she filed in support of President Trump. Indeed, Plaintiffs themselves
characterize the statements at issue as “wild accusations” and “outlandish claims.” Id. at ¶¶ 2, 60,
97, 111. They are repeatedly labelled “inherently improbable” and even “impossible.” Id. at ¶¶
110, 111, 114, 116 and 185. Such characterizations of the allegedly defamatory statements further
support Defendants’ position that reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact but
view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process.
Furthermore, Sidney Powell disclosed the facts upon which her conclusions were based.
“[W]hen a defendant provides the facts underlying the challenged statements, it is ‘clear that

the challenged statements represent his own interpretation of those facts,’ which ‘leav[es] the reader
free to draw his own conclusions.’” Bauman, 377 F. Supp. 3d at 11 at n. 7 (citations omitted). The
documents supporting the various lawsuits were made available to the public on the DTR website,
as the Complaint makes clear. See, e.g., Compl. at ¶¶ 6, 77, 82, 85, 87, 89. Similarly, all the
documents related to the election lawsuits filed were publicly available through the websites of the
various courts.12 Likewise, on December 23, 2020, the Complaint alleges, Powell published a 270-
page document to the Zenger News website. She added a link to the Zenger website on her own
website with the caption, “READ IT: SIDNEY POWELL BINDER OF ELECTION FRAUD
EVIDENCE.” Id. at ¶ 149.

Most of the brief deals with the fact that they deliberately filed in Washington assuming that is a Democrat-controlled court so they are seeking political favoritism. Sidney Powell really had no connection to Washington and claiming she represented Flynn in DC has nothing to do with this case. It should be dismissed or sent to Texas where she is a resident but neither Dominion nor Powell are in DC. That is very strange, to begin with.

The claim that “no reasonable person would have believed” which some media claims to have quoted, simply does not exist in her reply brief. They are quoting cases that people normally assume political speech “is often vituperative, abusive and inexact.”

As I said, I understand her legal argument, but she should have known that arguing EVEN IF the statements were wrong, is still political speech, and protected by the First Amendment was not the best argument. As I have also said, the only way to prove allegations of fraud against Dominion will require access to the program code. That cannot be determined from the results. I still believe that the fraud was with the mail-in ballots. It may have existed in the machine counts, but that could only be established by accessing the programs. If I were her, I would not go after all the program source code, the names of every programmer who EVER worked on the project. Dominion must have been out of their mind to file such a lawsuit.

Mar 25 2021

Prosecutors Now Backing Away from Statements and Charges Against January 6th Protestors


Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 24, 2021 | Sundance | 67 Comments

Interesting that Reuters would outline the walk-backs.  Even more interesting that the details of the walk-backs seem to prove the DOJ never actually intended to win any of these cases, but rather wanted to advance a political narrative about extremists through their earlier statements.

The approach of building a political narrative through false accusations and over-charging in the DOJ is the essence of Lawfare.  The government has endless taxpayer resources to fuel their political weaponization of the judiciary.

The process of the charges then becomes the punishment by design.  The targets are drained financially, sometimes physically detained under false pretense, and then the DOJ walks backwards when the judges finally ask for proof.

The process is the punishment for political affiliation.  The DOJ is fully weaponized.  The majority of Americans can clearly see this taking place.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Prosecutors made some serious claims after the deadly U.S. Capitol attack, saying they had evidence rioters planned to kill elected officials, suggesting a Virginia man at the building received directives to gas lawmakers, and accusing another suspect of directing mayhem on Jan. 6 with encrypted messages.

But the Justice Department has since acknowledged in court hearings that some of its evidence concerning the riot – carried out by a mob of supporters of former President Donald Trump to try to overturn his election loss – is less damning than it initially indicated.

[…] On Jan. 19, prosecutors said they believed Thomas Caldwell, a retired U.S. Navy officer from Virginia, had a “leadership role” within the Oath Keepers. The FBI, in a criminal complaint, described Facebook messages Caldwell allegedly sent and received “while at the Capitol,” including one urging him to turn on the gas and tear up the floorboards.

“‘All members are in the tunnels under capital seal them in. Turn on gas,’” it read.

A prosecutor in Florida read those words aloud in February in a bid to convince a judge to detain two of Caldwell’s co-defendants. Prosecutors now acknowledge that Caldwell was not even a dues-paying member of the Oath Keepers and that they lack evidence he ever entered the Capitol.

There also are questions about the Facebook messages. Caldwell’s lawyer said in a March 10 court filing those messages were sent by two men who were more than 60 miles (100 km) away at the time and had no connection to the Oath Keepers. The comments were apparently satirical, albeit “tasteless,” his lawyer said, and Caldwell never responded to them. (read more)

This pattern of Main Justice overcharging based on fabricated or overblown claims is consistent with their exact same activity in the Trump-Russia investigation.  DAG Rosenstein charged fictitious characters in Russia and then buried the entire indictment of a dozen people in the National Security Division, never to be heard from again after July 13, 2018…. Of course, just from the indictment itself, the media had the talking points they needed.

If you are old enough to remember the Soviet-era propaganda approximately five years prior to the Polish solidarity movement, you are old enough to have a solid frame of reference for July’s 2018 announcement from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. {GO DEEP}

Mar 25 2021

Uniparty Senate Confirms Rachael Levine As Asst. Secretary of HHS, 52-48 Vote With Collins and Murkowski Supporting


Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 24, 2021 | Sundance | 122 Comments

Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voted with the Democrats in the senate to confirm Rachael Levine as Asst. Secretary of Health and Human services, despite the abhorrent job Levine did while Health Secretary for Pennsylvania during the COVID crisis.

Last month Senator Rand Paul questioned Levine during the confirmation hearing, and exposed the radical agenda behind the nominee.

Despite the terrible job in Pennsylvania, and despite the radical outlook toward gender reassignment for teens, the UniParty found a way to continue supporting the far-left.

(NPR) The Senate voted Wednesday to confirm Dr. Rachel Levine as assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health and Human Services. The vote is a history-making one: Levine is the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the Senate.

The vote was 52-48 in favor of her confirmation.

Levine was previously Pennsylvania’s secretary of health, where she led the commonwealth’s COVID-19 response.

Before the vote, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., urged her colleagues to support Levine’s nomination, calling her a “trusted voice” for Pennsylvanians on matters, including opioid prescribing guidelines, health equity and LGBTQ health care. (read more)

Mar 25 2021

House Intelligence Committee Republicans Deeply Concerned About Politically Weaponized Intelligence Community


Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 24, 2021 | Sundance | 148 Comments

Glenn Greenwald has a great breakdown of a letter submitted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) about the political weaponization of the intelligence community.  For those who have tracked this issue Greenwald’s article is well worth the read.

GREENWALD – […] “Involvement of the intelligence community in the domestic activities of U.S. citizens is one of the most dangerous breaches of civil liberties and democratic order the U.S. Government can perpetrate. It was after World War II when the CIA, the NSA and other security state agencies that wield immense and unlimited powers in the dark were created in the name of fighting the Cold War.

Legal and institutional prohibitions on wielding that massive machinery against the American public were central to the always-dubious claim that this security behemoth that operates completely in the dark was compatible with democracy. As the ACLU noted, “in its 1947 charter, the CIA was prohibited from spying against Americans, in part because President Truman was afraid that the agency would engage in political abuse.”” (read more)

Mar 25 2021

Federal Judge Scolds Politically Activist DOJ For Media Statements, Interviews and Leaks


Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 24, 2021 | Sundance | 111 Comments

It is this writers opinion the DOJ has no plan to succeed with guilty convictions in prosecuting defendants connected to the January 6th DC protest.  The process is the punishment. We see this pattern with many of the activities associated with the Lawfare group inside the DOJ.   Using a weaponized justice system for political value is the essence of Lawfare.

As a consequence, the politically weaponized DOJ is engaged in a public narrative building campaign intended to create political value only.  Prosecutor Michael Sherwin appearing on 60 minutes in combination with DOJ officials giving statements to the New York Times is exactly the same historic pattern used by Main Justice in their political attacks against President Trump and his campaign.

AG Merrick Garland takes-over exactly where Loretta Lynch, Sally Yates, Eric Holder and DAG Rod Rosenstein left off.  However, this time a federal judge is warning the DOJ the actions of the justice department are compromising their case, and he will take action against the department’s lawyers if this continues.

WASHINGTON – U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta said during a court hearing conducted by phone and Zoom he was “surprised” to see Michael Sherwin, the former acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and other officials discussing the pending investigation into the insurrection in interviews with the New York Times and CBS’s 60 Minutes.

“I was surprised — and I’m being restrained in my use of terminology — surprised, to say the least, to see Mr. Sherwin sitting for an interview about a pending case in an ongoing criminal investigation. Whether his interview violated Justice Department policy is really not for me to say, but it is something I hope the Department of Justice is looking into,” the judge said. “As for the New York Times story, I found it troubling that sources within the Department of Justice were detailing the possibility of additional charges in a pending criminal case in an ongoing criminal investigation. I have little doubt that anonymously divulging internal department deliberations is contrary to department policy.”

[…] “No matter how much press attention this matter gets, let me be clear that these defendants are entitled to a fair trial, not one that is conducted in the media,” Mehta said. “They are also entitled to defend against charges that are actually brought against them, not speculation about what might or might not be coming. … The fact is, these types of statements in the media have the potential of affecting the jury pool and the rights of these defendants, and the government, quite frankly, in my view, should know better.”  (read more)

Mar 24 2021

Falling Down


Posted originally on GrrrGraphics.com MAR 23, 2021 AT 1:58 PM

Joe Biden took quite a spill on an airplane ramp and the meme masters had a field day making fun of him. I thought I’d join in here.

Biden is a rolling disaster of multi-dimensional proportions. The problem is, he’s setting up the entire country for a fall.

— Ben Garrison

Mar 24 2021

Sidney Powell Shoots Herself in the Head – not the Foot


Armstrong Economics Blog/Economics Re-Posted Mar 23, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: What do you think about Sidney Powell saying no reasonable person would believe what she says.

HD

ANSWER: I understand the legal argument that there is no harm because she was not believed. I have never seen proof that the software of Dominion was rigged as she said. The fact that they sued her in the first place opened the door for her to go after their programs to prove what she said was true. The fact that she immediately allowed her lawyer to put up the argument that nobody would believe her I think was a disastrous move for whatever her credibility might have been, I believe she shot herself in the head with that one. Perhaps that is why Trump did not have her as his lawyer. She did this on her own.

The problem with the election and where any fraud took place was with the mail-in ballots. I have looked at the results from machines but there is no way to prove that the machines were rigged without access to the programs. Absent that information, I could not agree with anyone that Dominion was the source. Biden won Georgis by 12,000 votes. That was entirely confined to the mail-in ballots. Even the arguments that Trump made about the spikes in the votes in the morning did not involve the Dominion machines.

Even the new voter laws pushed out by the Democrats institutionalize the mail-in ballots and same-day registration which is absurd meaning you cannot verify who the people are on a same-day basis.

I have emphasized from the beginning that this was never a Trump v Biden election. The agenda comes from the World Economic Forum and they were the ones pitching the slogan “Build Back Better” in 2019 BEFORE COVID-19 appeared at the end of 2019.

Those who want to constantly throw darts at Trump that is fine. This has NEVER been an election about personalities. Anyone who simply voted for Biden because they hated Trump is a real fool. If you do not vote on the issues, you are the very problem that we have and why nations fall. Republics are the most DANGEROUS form of government. They can lie to your face, smile, you elect them, and then they do EXACTLY the opposite of what they promised.

To me this was never about supporting Trump – it was about opposing Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum. When Nigel Farage flew into our Rome World Economic Conference, he said he had to because we were the “alternative to Davos” and have been doing so since we began the WEC in 1985 and Schwab began his in 1987.

As one reader just wrote in:

“Marty,
Can Socrates take into account changes in U.S. tax law? For instance, the CARES act changed the way IRAs are taxed when passed to your descendants (you can no longer stretch them out over the child’s lifetime) and the Democrats are ready to introduce higher income and estate taxes and possibly changes to the step-up basis. Its hard to keep track really. Doesn’t this imply future forced tax selling of stocks and bonds and even real estate?
Thanks, Rob”

Biden never ran on any of those issues. If you voted for Biden, is this what you voted for? Socrates is already projecting the decline and fall of the United States. If you recall the S&L Crisis of the 1980s and 1990s was also created by the Democrats. They took control of Congress and changed the tax code on real estate investment. In doing so, they created a one-way market where everyone wanted to sell. Meanwhile, they had regulated the S&Ls so they were supposed to lend on real estate. The bulk of their portfolios collapsed and then the Democrats blamed the S&Ls. I advised one person who bought an S&L at a distressed price in the crisis AGAINST my advice. They changed the criteria again and now he was forced into bankruptcy. You could not buy anything because the politicians kept changing the rules. It would be like investing in stocks and they pass a law that says you must pay a 5% wealth tax annually on all stock investments. If you want to watch a crash, nobody will want to buy stocks and you will see a drop of problem 90% like the Great Depression.

Another reader from Poland sent in:

“Dear Marty. It seems Poland may be an early adopter of the “You will own nothing and be happy” doctrine.
On Friday, parliament is expected to vote on legislation (quietly hidden in the small print of agenda but thankfully unearthed) that aims to phase out currency within 7 years and introduce a cashless accounting system that allows for a negative balance, to be repaid on death, by the state taking ownership of your assets, unless your family can afford to pay the balance/death tax to recover it.
Interesting times ahead. Thank you as always for your insights and news briefs.
Kindest regards:”

SG

What I have stood for has been freedom and the end of corruption. The problem with those who voted for Biden is they will get what they deserve. The problem for the rest of us, they are out to end society as we know it. They are against handing your children anything. They believe everyone should start at ZERO – except them of course.

So in my view, Powell has lost credibility regardless if that was only a simple legal argument. I do not believe you can drag in Dominion without evidence that the software was actually rigged. As for those who voted for Biden, take pride in the fact that you put the next nail in the coffin of the United States. You better start learning Mandarin. You just ensured our forecast that China will replace the USA as the Financial Capital of the World will indeed be correct

Mar 24 2021

JoeBama Calls For Assault Weapon Ban, Universal Background Checks and Ban on High Capacity Magazines


Posted originally on the conservative tree house March 23, 2021 | Sundance | 147 Comments

“Assault weapons” politically defined as any firearm that can kill people.  “High Capacity Magazines” defined as any weapon that can hold more than seven bullets. “Universal Background Checks” defined as a federal registry of who owns guns in the United States (you can imagine how that registry aligns with the newly proposed “domestic extremist” list).   Below are Biden’s transcribed remarks:

(White House) – JOE BIDEN: “I don’t need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take commonsense steps that will save the lives in the future and to urge my colleagues in the House and Senate to act.

We can ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in this country once again. I got that done when I was a senator. It passed. It was law for the longest time, and it brought down these mass killings. We should do it again.

We can close the loopholes in our background check system, including the “Charleston loophole.” That’s one of the best tools we have right now to prevent gun violence. The Senate should immediately pass — let me say it again: The United States Senate — I hope some are listening — should immediately pass the two House-passed bills that close loopholes in the background check system.

These are bills that received votes of both Republicans and Democrats in the House. This is not and should not be a partisan issue; this is an American issue. It will save lives — American lives — and we have to act. We should also ban assault weapons in the process.” (link)

Every day we get a little bit closer…

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