SWC Re The Whitmer Case

Shipwreckedcrew has a lengthy series of tweets on the Whitmer kidnapping case--or whatever it was. I'll select a few of his tweets, because he has a particular axe to grind, but you can read the entire unrolled thread here.

One of SWC's major points is that the entire case was what he calls a "confederacy of dunces". I certainly won't dispute that. What he focuses on in that respect is that the indictment is significantly flawed in an important respect: 

The indictment lists 16 overt acts to further the kidnapping conspiracy, between June 6 and October 7. However, the FBI's main informant has stated that there was no agreement on what crime to commit before August 9. The point is this: six of the overt acts alleged in the indictment to be in furtherance of the kidnapping conspiracy occurred before August 9. That means those six acts--supposedly in furtherance of a conspiracy--occurred before there was any conspiracy! How can anyone act in furtherance of a conspiracy before there's a conspiracy?

I'll accept SWC's contention that that's a problem, and that it probably points to bigger problems down the road. All that is fine. However, SWC's major target is this--he wants to argue that, because the case was a trainwreck from a legal standpoint, there cannot be any connection between the Michigan case and the January 6 Event. My contention is not that there ever was such a connection--we can't know that at this point, despite suggestive connections of some of the players. Rather, I contend that the fact that the case was a trainwreck doesn't mean there wasn't any connection between the two cases. By the same token that we don't have the facts to actually prove a connection, neither do we have the facts that would disprove the connection. Why is it so hard for SWC to simply admit that?

So, he writes:

What If?

This is obviously speculative. Nevertheless ... it's true that there are connections between personnel in both events. Or plots.

Catch up on what @DarrenJBeattie has been reporting for months re FBI framing Americans as ‘domestic terrorists.’ NB: he also reported that head of FBI field office that set up bogus Whitmer operation is now supervising J6 investigations. https://t.co/EQA7OVZ1HX

— Lee Smith (@LeeSmithDC) July 21, 2021

Was the FBI SAC of Detroit promoted to ADIC of WFO in Oct. 2020 as part of a plan to have him in place to oversee the Jan 6 protest investigations?

If no, what significance is there to the fact he was promoted from Point A to Point B? https://t.co/OseI4uqWHk

— shipwreckedcrew (@shipwreckedcrew) July 21, 2021

UPDATED: Watch Out For That Nightstand!

New update re SA Richard (Dick?) Trask of Kalamazoo. I picked this up via Red State, who got it from the Detroit News.

Remember that "domestic incident" that got Trask--who happens to have been the case agent in the Whitmer "kidnapping" case--arrested on a felony charge? We've got more details. Not all the details, but enough to feed one's imagination:

An FBI agent at the center of the plot to kidnap and kill Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is accused of jumping on his wife in bed and smashing her head against a nightstand after a dispute stemming from a swingers’ party, according to court records.

Special Agent Richard Trask, 39, of Kalamazoo, was charged Monday with assault with intent to do great bodily harm, less than murder following an incident Sunday.

An affidavit filed by the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office in Kalamazoo County District Court said Trask’s wife had bloody lacerations to the right side of her head and “blood all over chest, clothing arms and hand,” as well as “severe” bruising to her neck and throat.

You may recall from this morning that one of the defense lawyers says there's a recording that features another FBI agent, Henrik Impola, discussing the possibility of creating "disarray and chaos" for defense lawyers. No comment on how the prosecutors view these FBI antics. "Disarray and chaos" sounds about right--for the prosecution.

UPDATE: If you can't get enough of this stuff, Zerohedge has more: Whitmer Kidnapping Defendants Claim Entrapment After 12 FBI Informants Involved In Plot. Here are the key new facts:

One 'informant,' an Iraq war veteran, "became so deeply enmeshed in a Michigan militant group" that he rose to second-in-command - telling members of the group to meet with other potential suspects, and even footing the bill to transport members to meetings.

...

For six months, the Iraq War vet had been wearing a wire, gathering hundreds of hours of recordings. He wasn’t the only one. A biker who had traveled from Wisconsin to join the group was another informant. The man who’d advised them on where to put the explosives — and offered to get them as much as the task would require — was an undercover FBI agent. So was a man in one of the other cars who said little and went by the name Mark. -BuzzFeed

...

Last week, the lawyer for one defendant filed a motion that included texts from an FBI agent to a key informant, the Iraq War veteran, directing him to draw specific people into the conspiracy — potential evidence of entrapment that he said the government “inadvertently disclosed.” He is requesting all texts sent and received by that informant, and other attorneys are now considering motions that accuse the government of intentionally withholding evidence of entrapment. -BuzzFeed

It's not conclusive, but I have to believe that the prosecution is reeling a bit.

What's Up In The Whitmer Kidnapping Case?

We're slowly learning a bit more about a case that always seemed, how to say it, half-assed? Which isn't to say that goofballs don't commit serious crimes. Still, as soon as we began to learn more it started to seem a bit far fetched. That process continues.

One bit of news doesn't actually have anything to do with the FBI's case per se--but, then again, it really does. What do I mean?

I'm referring to the fact that the FBI case agent has screwed up in his personal life:

FBI agent in Whitmer kidnap case arrested following domestic incident

When they say "arrested following domestic incident" what they mean is this:

UPDATED: Tucker Carlson Redux

The revelation that the Tucker Carlson email around which the NSA spying controversy has swirled was part of an attempt by Tucker to arrange to interview Vladimir Putin makes a lot of things more clear.

First of all, the likely scenario now is that, as NSA says, Tucker was not targeted. Rather, Tucker's email came to the attention of analysts because it was directed to someone close to Putin--someone who would be a key intermediary in getting any interview ball rolling. The target wasn't Tucker, per se, but Russian nationals, particularly those close to the Russian leadership.

So far, so good. There's no problem with this. That's well within normal national security bounds.

Where the problems start is with the decision by the Zhou regime to have its agents--NSA, FBI, whoever--leak the contents of Tucker's email to various regime proxy media outlets, i.e., the usual liberal suspects. The strategy, as Tucker explains it, seems to have been that these regime proxies would leak hints that Tucker is somehow a Russian agent. The idea would be that the interview with Putin was to be part of a Russian disinformation op targeting "our democracy"--meaning, Dem political interests. The Dems were probably also trying to devise ways to tie this in to their Domestic War on "Terror" via "Russian hacking".

Even worse, the leaks might hint that Tucker is personally controlled by Putin--just like Trump, doncha know. The Dems and their media proxies haven't yet taken to referring to Putin as Vlad The Impaler, but short of that Putin is the all purpose Boogey Man that Dems think they can use to hoodwink conservatives, destroy Tucker's credibility, and keep their own base enmeshed in a world of conspiracy theories.

So, where do things stand?

NSA Denies That Tucker Was Ever A 'Target'

But of course that was never the issue. It's one of those non-denial denials. Glenn Greenwald points that out at somewhat greater length:

First, it's bizarre that @NSAGov allow no replies.

IOW, NSA's non-denial tweet allowed no responses. 

Second, NSA has used this same deceit for years: they can spy on US citizens' communications without "targeting" the American.

Third, NSA has extremely broad authorities to collect communications without "targeting" a person. https://t.co/vAgaSS0x1k

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 30, 2021

The real question has never been whether the NSA collects communication data regarding all USPERs, including Tucker Carlson. It does. The real question is, Has an investigative agency acquired the data that NSA has, beyond a doubt, been collecting with regard to Tucker Carlson? If so, the investigative agency must be doing so by virtue of a warrant and must have an open full investigation--if not on Tucker himself as the subject, then on someone with whom Tucker is in contact. Let's hear from the FBI.

In the meantime, there's this:

And just FYI: the Pentagon just suspended a pro-Trump security official for "unauthorized disclosure of classified information" from the NSA -- meaning, presumably, that she leaked NSA activities to someone she wasn't supposed to talk to about it:https://t.co/OqCECPj6rr

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 30, 2021

What's The Story Re Tucker?

As I'm sure you know, Tucker Carlson has announced that a "whistleblower"--which, in this context, I take to mean simply an informed source--has told him that he (Tucker) is being "spied on" by the National Security Agency (NSA):

I assume that the NSA collects all communications that it's able to collect--phone calls, emails, texts, whatever. If it's technically possible for NSA to collect some category of data, they do:

Whether and how that data gets put to use is a longer story. We're all familiar with the fact that the FBI for years appears to have been accessing the NSA databases for routine checks on people, without the legally required predication for running such checks. The exact parameters of this illegal activity aren't clear, except that it appears to have definitely occurred in politically sensitive situations and for political reasons. Some may wish to disagree with that conclusion, but that the activity was in fact illegal is inarguable, whatever the motives. Also inarguable is that there have been no known consequences for the actual individuals who were responsible.

Intel Work, Criminal Work--Today's FBI?

Yesterday I did a lengthy analysis of Shipwreckedcrew's shortcoming's in discussing the Russia Hoax--especially the role of Carter Page and the key fact of Page's involvement with the FBI's hugely important case against Russian officials in New York. The actual nature of the charges may not have been terribly earth shaking, but in the world of counterintelligence (CI) and foreign policy the case was huge. Page's targeting by the FBI simply cannot be understood without a full understanding of Page's role in that case and his falling out with the FBI.

I followed that up a bit later with Somebody Tell SWC To Stop Digging! That post was very brief and was simply intended to show that SWC doesn't really have a clue about the FBI's "intelligence" work--more properly speaking, National Security work. Since that post was so short I'll quote it in its entirety:

I can't believe it when prosecutors say sh*t like this:

@shipwreckedcrew:

It might end up tanking the criminal case. But building a criminal case is not what intelligence division agents are focused on when they are trying to figure out if Scientist X is a spy or not a spy. The only goal for the intelligence agent is to get an answer to that question.

The FBI has an "Intelligence Division" and a "Criminal Division" -- they do separate kinds of work.  The "Intelligence Division" is not gathering evidence for purposes of a court proceeding.  They have more "leeway" for their conduct.  Their goal is to simply get information.

He was a prosecutor and doesn't understand that espionage is a criminal offense? 

Later, reader Jim pointed me to an article at the Cato Institute:

Bad Incentives Lead FBI Agent to Accuse Chinese‐​Born Canadian Researcher of Being a Spy

Cato, of course, is a pretty doctrinaire libertarian think tank, and you can read about it here. I oppose much of the policy agenda that Cato advances, and for our purposes here I'll point out that Cato advocates for very liberal immigration policies and opposed President Trump's policies. The article must therefore be read with certain filters working. On the other hand, it offers an entrance into a somewhat different world than most readers may be familiar with and may help clear up misunderstandings such as SWC demonstrates.

The thesis of the Cato article is that the FBI and prosecutors, operating under pressure to find spies, find spies. In a way it's a bit like a CI version of, when all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Looked at from a different angle, it can lead to "bad incentives" such as framing innocent Chinese professors in order to impress your superiors and gain promotion. Cato is very much of the view that the Chinese professor is most likely innocent--and for all I know from my distance Cato may be right:

Is Chinese Defector Shaking Up USIC--And US Politics?

Earlier this evening commenter AmericanCardigan passed along claimed information from Hot Air that the Chinese defector who's been providing information regarding the Wuhan origins of Covid-19 is the former head of CI for the PRC's Ministry of State Security (MSS). I commented at the time--just a few hours ago: 

[The claim is] tantalizing, but towards the middle mention is made of something that jumped to my mind immediately:

"would a spy-catcher be in position to know what went on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology with SARS-CoV-2?"

Never say never, reality can surprise. But there's also the matter of need to know--and a counterintelligence guy would have zero need to know about anything going on at Wuhan. Except concerns about foreign spies. Not the kind of detailed science we're hearing about.

Nevertheless, Red State--which seems to be the conduit for information about this defector--is confirming what hours ago were still rumors--Chinese Defector's Identity Confirmed, Was Top Counterintelligence Official:

Somebody Tell SWC To Stop Digging!

I can't believe it when prosecutors say sh*t like this:

@shipwreckedcrew:

It might end up tanking the criminal case. But building a criminal case is not what intelligence division agents are focused on when they are trying to figure out if Scientist X is a spy or not a spy. The only goal for the intelligence agent is to get an answer to that question.

The FBI has an "Intelligence Division" and a "Criminal Division" -- they do separate kinds of work.  The "Intelligence Division" is not gathering evidence for purposes of a court proceeding.  They have more "leeway" for their conduct.  Their goal is to simply get information.

He was a prosecutor and doesn't understand that espionage is a criminal offense? 

SWC Having Rough Day Re Carter Page

Actually, Shipwreckedcrew is having a fairly rough day overall--despite a fine article dissecting Merrick Garland's efforts to intimidate the Arizona senate. My takeaway from one is that Garland could be facing some significantly rough sledding. SWC himself points out that Garland, in his letter to AZ, misrepresented the law. And Mark Brnovich, AZ AG, made it clear in so many words, that AZ is "not amused by the DoJ's posturing.

Ultimately, SWC concludes:

That [Brnovich's response] seems to be a “line in the sand” and an invitation to DOJ to come into Arizona for a little exercise in lawfare over the issue of Arizona’s conduct of elections.

There is no question that Garland made it clear the Biden Department of Justice is going to take up the cause of the Democrat Party in pursuing electoral advantages through the courts.

If not for Pres. Trump’s ability to get dozens of new Appeals Court Justices nominated, and Mitch McConnell’s ability to get those nominees through the Senate, the very existence of the GOP as a viable political entity could have been at risk.

Things have gone downhill from there for SWC. He engaged in a long and abusive exchange with Julie Kelly, before ultimately--after much name calling on his part--having to admit that he had misrepresented what Kelly had written. Ouch!

At the same time, however, he was engaging in another flame war with regard to the Carter Page FISA--and once again demonstrating less than a full grasp of the facts. In what follows I've omitted most Twitter headers.

It started with a fairly tame tweet by Lee Smith (I couldn't see where it was coming from):

He means I believe that Page’s history as a USG informant was erased by an FBI official. The point is not about the Page FISA but rather that the laws and regulations that should be observed are no longer observed by the agencies involved. twitter.com/shipwreckedcre…

SWC immediately launched on an unwise course that--for reasons best known to himself--he has been pursuing for some time: defending the FBI's institutional conduct in the Russia Hoax, writing it off to the incompetence of isolated individuals. And accompanying it with slurs that he's not going to be able to back up. So, he writes:

[Page's history as a USG informant] wasn't erased. It was considered and then dismissed BY ONE AGENT as being untimely.  It only took that one agent to leave it out of the FISA application. The people who reviewed the application had no idea Page had provided information to the CIA -- until Page went public.

Concluding that "laws and regulations ... are no longer observed" because one agent looked at the information from the CIA and said "outdated" is unreasonable and silly.

The big problems are in the first paragraph. Carter Page was a long time CIA asset--up until 2013. At that time--and this is me telling you how these things work--the FBI became aware of a possible case with Russian officials in New York and wanted to use Page against those officials. The way this would have worked would have been like this: The FBI--through standard FISA coverage of the Russian officials--learned that Page was in touch with those officials to one extent or another. When they contacted Page, Page told them he was working with the CIA--we know this from FBI records. The two agencies coordinated, and because of the possibility that the FBI could make a big case against Russians--any criminal case against foreign officials is huge--and because Page was a relatively minor asset for the CIA, the FBI took over with Page. The transition was basically seamless. That also means that Page was an asset or informant of some sort for the FBI, and had a file opened on him. He was in the system, along with his background.

As things developed, this worked out great for the FBI. They made their case, they arrested the Russians, and they told Page to stand by in case he was needed as a witness. That continued up until shortly before Page joined the Trump campaign. Shortly before that event Page took it upon himself to inform Russian officials that he was, in fact, working for the FBI and had been helping the FBI in the case described above. The FBI was understandably outraged--possibly especially so because this may have compromised sensitive investigative techniques.

However, the main point in this is that, as I've been long maintaining, this case was so huge in the big picture of US-Russian relations that there was simply no way that the top most levels of the FBI would not have been following the case closely and probably knew who Page was by name. They would have been briefing the White House on the case--it was a major feather in the cap for the FBI and then Page possibly threatened it.

What happened next is that FBI New York immediately hit the ceiling and began looking for ways to make Page pay a price for what he had done. They opened a counterintelligence case on Page and began exploring the possibility of obtaining a FISA on Page. Those discussions involved none other than Peter Strzok, but in the event no FISA was obtained until the Fall of 2016.

But then, shortly after all that hit the fan, Page joined the Trump campaign. Now, if Mcabe and Comey didn't know Page's name and his role in the New York case before, they sure did then. Comey was telling AG Lynch about Page, who in the FBI would have failed to brief him on Page?

That's the picture to keep in mind as SWC goes to war with one and all. Various persons challenged SWC on his take, defending the Russia Hoax as the fault of ONE AGENT:

Major Update On The Chinese Defector Scoop

Red State is running a brief but explosive article that sheds additional light on Adam Housley's "scoop" regarding a high level Chinese defector who confirms the lab origins of Covid:

EXCLUSIVE: High-Ranking Chinese Defector Has 'Direct Knowledge' of Several Chinese Special Weapons Programs

While the article doesn't say so directly, the clear inference from what's said is that this defector came initially to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). DIA has been debriefing the defector for the last three months and withheld information from other Intel Community agencies--FBI and CIA are specifically mentioned--because DIA believes those agencies have been penetrated by Chinese "spies or sources".

Presumably the other agencies are now being allowed access to the defector:

FBI Director Christopher Wray was “ambushed” with the information, they say, and Langley [the CIA] was also unaware. Sources say DIA leadership kept the defector within their Clandestine Services network to prevent Langley and the State Department from accessing the person, whose existence was kept from other agencies because DIA leadership believes there are Chinese spies or sources inside the FBI, CIA, and several other federal agencies.

Note that this doesn't necessarily discredit anything that Adam Housley said--Housley was passing on what his FBI sources told him. There are a number of reasons why those sources may have concealed some of the facts.

The information provided to RedState corroborates and clarifies Thursday evening’s reporting by journalist Adam Housley. The defector is considered to be highly reliable--unlike Tony Fauci and other government funded scientists:

Sources tell RedState the defector has been with the DIA for three months and that he has provided an extensive, technically detailed debrief to US officials. In DIA’s assessment, the information provided by the defector is legitimate. Sources say the level of confidence in the defector’s information is what has led to a sudden crisis of confidence in Dr. Anthony Fauci, adding that U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) personnel detailed to DIA have corroborated very technical details of information provided by the defector.

Adam Housley's Scoop: True - Not True?

Yesterday in a comment exchange I expressed reservations about sundance's theory regarding Fauci being hung out to dry. That didn't mean that I didn't read his post with interest, nor that I disagreed with all of it. For example, Fauci is surely not at the top of the Covid cover-up food chain, so from that standpoint he should be eligible for being hung out. However, Fauci unquestionably knows an awful lot--not facts or science or stuff like that, but the people involved and their overall motives. So, just as in the Russia Hoax, where Comey and McCabe may know too much to be made scapegoats, the same may be true regarding Fauci.

But, then, what about sundance's very valid point--all the leaks lately, don't they point toward a scapegoating role for Fauci. My reservation in that regard is that--for now--the occupants of the White House seem to be circling the wagons to protect Fauci from these devastating reservations. Fauci himself appears to be returning to his original position--hadda be a natural origin for Covid, couldn't have been Gain-Of-Function experiment released by accident from a lab in Wuhan. Of course, it's possible that the White House occupants are still assessing the risks involved in making Fauci a scapegoat, so Tony can't rest easy.

My point is raising these issues is to simply exercise some caution. There are other things going on, too, and those developments may point in a slightly different direction--a direction that could be difficult for the White House occupants to control. It may prove impossible to protect Fauci for the long run. Those "other things" may also shed some light on the leaks we're seeing.

Before we get there, to Housley's scoop--if it is a scoop--let's review a few important bits of information.

The other day when the Fauci emails came out I--and, of course, others--put a lot of emphasis on Fauci's email exchange with a top level virologist at Scripps Research, Kristian Andersen. That exchange took place very near the the beginning of the Covid panic--Jan 31 - Feb 1. What Andersen wrote to Fauci--citing support from several other scientists--blows the "natural origins" argument out of the water. Now, later Andersen--who is associated with Peter Daszak, a major promoter of GOF at Wuhan--tried to walk back his original view, to make it conform with the official "natural origin" narrative. But now we have his original email, in which he states categorically:

Did You Hear The One About ...

... The “slimy” and “creepy” high-ranking FBI agent who groped three of his female subordinates, made inappropriate sexual comments in the workplace, and regularly drank on the job?

I didn't actually pay any attention to the story until I was catching up on Twitter just now, and I saw Kurt Schlichter and Shipwreckedcrew weighing in on this--with a few others. Here's how the discussion went ...

Secret Probation? Wow--Thanks For Your Service!

After all, secret probation beats going to jail, right?

Retired FBI agent charged in “secret probation” scheme

DALLAS (1080 KRLD) - A retired FBI agent is indicted for allegedly scamming a woman out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The Justice Department says William Roy Stone Jr., 62, convinced a Granbury woman in 2015 that she was on “secret probation” for drug crimes in “Judge Anderson’s Court” in Austin.

...

Stone gave the woman a series of conditions, including reimbursing him for expenses incurred; and that if she didn’t comply, she risked imprisonment and the loss of her children.

Stone ultimately convinced her to pay him about $800,000, which he used to buy cars and a house.

...

Stone was indicted earlier this week on a slew of charges, including wire fraud and false impersonation of a federal officer, and made his initial court appearance Friday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Rebecca Rutherford.

If convicted, Stone faces up to 178 years in federal prison.

My bet--he won't get probation. Secret or otherwise.

UPDATED: FBI Analyst Arrested

UPDATE: This is just a really weird case. The time frame involved--suspended 2017, finally indicted 2021--suggests that the government was running up against the statue of limitations and its investigation had not discovered what, if anything, Kingsbury was doing with the documents. That was surely the focus of the investigation. Very strange, but sometimes people are.

H/T Jim.

While the FBI has spent years pursuing its Ahab-like hunt for the Great White Supremacist conspiracy, Kendra Kingsbury--an analyst in the Kansas City office--spent the years from 2004 to 2017 systematically combing through FBI files and taking home sensitive documents. Here's the weirder part--she seems to have simply retained these documents at home. The indictment makes no mention of her having sought to transfer the documents to third persons, whether for profit or out of ideological commitment. What was she up to? Further, these were not simply documents that she accessed in her ordinary work day--she went out of her way to access and accumulate these documents that she had no reason to even look at. Why?

The weirdest part, of course, is that the FBI seems not to have learned a whole lot from its past problems. Audit our file system for unauthorized access? Who, us? 

Here's the good news, which you can also read in the DoJ Press Release, below: After 13 years during which Kingsbury looted the FBI's sensitive files the FBI finally went to "great lengths" to investigate her and did so with "great diligence," "professionalism," and thoroughness. The Press Release says so, so I guess it's true. Better late than never, seems to be the idea. Awards for all.

Whew! At Least He Wasn't Implicated In Criminal Charges

Second h/t of the day to a reader--first was re Kilimnik. 

Not implicated in the criminal charges--that's the point, isn't it? What isn't forbidden by the law is allowed, and honi soit qui mal y pense. It seems pretty pointless to even comment on this. It simply illustrates where we've arrived as an empire. The Daily Mail has all the news that's not fit to print in our own MSM. Wikipedia has the bio:

Louis Joseph Freeh (born January 6, 1950) is an American attorney and former judge who served as the fifth Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from September 1993 to June 2001. Freeh began his career as a special agent in the FBI, and was later an Assistant United States Attorney and United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. A Republican, he was later appointed as FBI director by President Bill Clinton. He is now a lawyer and consultant in the private sector.

What can I say? My career trajectory was different. OTOH, Freeh's career isn't much different than that of subsequent FBI Directors. Public service, private sector--in the big picture it all tends to meld into self service. There's a particularly shameless quality to both sides of this equation, but it's The Way We Live Now. Tom Wolfe is dead, so who will be the Trollope for our era?

Be Very Afraid

So says, in effect, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). They want you to be very afraid of your fellow Americans, any number of whom DHS suspects may be domestic terrorists. Even though DHS admits that "DHS does not have any information to indicate a specific, credible plot."

DHS Issues a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin

Release Date: 

January 27, 2021

WASHINGTON – The Acting Secretary of Homeland Security has issued a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin today after consultation with the intelligence community and law enforcement partners. There is currently a heightened threat environment across the United States that is likely to persist over the coming weeks. DHS does not have any information to indicate a specific, credible plot; however, violent riots have continued in recent days and we remain concerned that individuals frustrated with the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances and ideological causes fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize a broad range of ideologically-motivated actors to incite or commit violence.

You can read the NTAS Bulletin here.

Now, I ask you: Are you aware of "violent riots [that] have continued in recent days"? I am. I know that violent riots have continued to occur in Portland and Seattle and a few other places. To my knowledge, every single one of these were Leftist--basically, Antifa--incited. 

Next question: Does Antifa fit the profile above? Individuals frustrated with the ... presidential transition? I've certainly never heard that that was part of Antifa ideology. Why then are we being warned about people who perceive a grievance related to the "presidential transition"?

As for DHS' consultation with "the intelligence community and law enforcement partners" I'm guessing that if you substitute "FBI" for that phrase it'll be close enough for government work.

In the meantime stay alert. Be very afraid. And don't hold your breath waiting for "any information to indicate a specific, credible plot."

The Internal GOP Struggle Intensifies

With the forces of Big Tech and Media behind them--as well as those of the Army of the Potomac still present in the Imperial City--the Zhou Baiden regime is seeking to persuade We The People of its legitimacy. It remains hampered in that regard by the fact that it dare not put its figurehead--Zhou Baiden himself--forward in public to do the job of persuasion. That would, in the American tradition, entail responding to random questioning in a free wheeling press conference environment--a non-starter for Zhou.

The GOPe has stepped forward, however. Mitch McConnell may have suffered a significant setback in the Senate vote regarding impeachment, triggered by Rand Paul, but he hasn't given up the NeverTrump cause. Within the Senate itself, while McConnell has had to deal with public warnings from established senators who are not normally aligned with Rand Paul--Lindsey Graham and Ron Johnson, for example--he has other tools for control. It appears that Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz--certainly among the most politically ambitious as well as (objectively speaking) intellectually accomplished Republican senators--have been sidelined, at least for a time, by an ethics complaint based on their objections to some of the electors (really). I don't claim to understand Senate rules but, until persuaded otherwise, my working assumption will be that the ethics complaint has McConnell's blessing, even if it was brought by Democrat senators.

In the meantime, McConnell is also providing aid and comfort to the Zhou Baiden both in his Senate role as well as by interfering in internal House matters. To all appearances, McConnell is attempting to establish himself--if not as actual head of the Republican party, then--as at least the senior or elder statesman for all Republicans. Again, I have a working assumption, and that is that McConnell is attempting to leverage his Big Money campaign finance contacts to muscle recalcitrant Republicans. No doubt he is acting at the behest of major donors and the Bushie wing of the Establishment. The outcome is no foregone conclusion--Trump has changed much in the political landscape.

In what follows, I've selected a list of headlines--several of them drawn from Liz Shield's Morning Greatness for today, with added comments. The overall thrust is the attempt to understand who the players in this high stakes contest are and where the battle lines are drawn.

First, let's start with a broad brush type of article, and I'll select just a few passages to place the political warfare in DC within its proper Globalist context:

Is It Time For A Drone Strike On Mar-a-Lago?

That's the interesting question that lefty loon has been talking up this week--two days in a row. Her concept seems to be, Hey, we won the election so why not? 

You think I'm exaggerating? Not really. Read on.

First of all, a hat tip to Newsbusters for these transcripts of former Bushie Wallace on MSNBC on Thursday and Friday.

On Thursday Wallace brought on ex-FBI wack job Clint Watts.  "According to Watts's bio, he's 'a national security contributor for NBC News and MSNBC.'" Get a load of this: