Daily Archives: February 3, 2020

al Qaeda Leader to be Extradited From Arizona to Iraq

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He ran an Arizona driving school and was described by friends and acquaintances in Phoenix as an outgoing, friendly member of the city’s Iraqi community and had been in the U.S. for more than a decade and had recently married and had a child. He arrived in the U.S. in January 2008 as a refugee from Iraq.

Ahmed and other members of al Qaeda shot and killed a lieutenant and an officer with the Fallujah Police Directorate in 2006, according to the Department of Justice. A warrant was issued for his arrest on Wednesday.

Jabir Algarawi, a board member of the Phoenix refugee assistance organization Refugees and Immigrants Community for Empowerment, said he met Ahmed in 2010 and knew him well.

Al-Qaeda Leader Wanted by Iraq for Murder Arrested in Arizona - C-VINE Network Ali Ahmed's arrest as suspected al-Qaida terrorist stuns Phoenix friends

PHOENIX – On January 31, 2020, a Phoenix-area resident, who is alleged to have been the leader of a group of Al-Qaeda terrorists in Al-Fallujah, Iraq, appeared today before a federal magistrate judge in Phoenix, Arizona in connection with proceedings to extradite him to the Republic of Iraq. He is wanted to stand trial in Iraq for two charges of premeditated murder committed in 2006 in Al-Fallujah.

The arrest was announced by Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Michael Bailey for the District of Arizona.

An Iraqi judge issued a warrant for the arrest of Ali Yousif Ahmed Al-Nouri, 42, on murder charges. The Government of Iraq subsequently requested Ahmed’s extradition from the United States. In accordance with its treaty obligations to Iraq, the United States filed a complaint in Phoenix seeking a warrant for Ahmed’s arrest based on the extradition request. U.S. Magistrate Judge John Z. Boyle issued the warrant on January 29, 2020, and Ahmed was arrested the following day.

According to the information provided by the Government of Iraq in support of its extradition request, Ahmed served as the leader of a group of Al-Qaeda terrorists in Al-Fallujah, Iraq, which planned operations targeting Iraqi police. Ahmed and other members of the Al-Qaeda group allegedly shot and killed a first lieutenant in the Fallujah Police Directorate and a police officer in the Fallujah Police Directorate, on or about June 1, 2006, and October 3, 2006, respectively.

The details contained in the complaint are allegations and have not yet been proven in court. If Ahmed’s extradition is certified by the court, the decision of whether to surrender him to Iraq will be made by the U.S. Secretary of State.

Ahmed’s arrest was executed by the FBI Phoenix Field Office, HSI Phoenix Field Office and the U.S. Marshals Service. The extradition case will be handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona and the Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs.

The Hack of the UN was a Secret

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A secret espionage hack actually. 40 servers; 400GB of data; administrator accounts; out of date cyber protections systems

Building A and Flags, The United Nations Office at Geneva ...  UN/Geneva

Leaked report shows United Nations suffered hack UN/Vienna

GENEVA (AP) — Sophisticated hackers infiltrated U.N. networks in Geneva and Vienna last year in an apparent espionage operation that top officials at the world body kept largely quiet. The hackers’ identity and the extent of the data they obtained are not known.

An internal confidential document from the United Nations, leaked to The New Humanitarian and seen by The Associated Press, says dozens of servers were compromised including at the U.N. human rights office, which collects sensitive data and has often been a lightning rod of criticism from autocratic governments for exposing rights abuses.

Everything indicates knowledge of the breach was closely held, a strategy that information security experts consider misguided because it only multiplies the risks of further data hemorrhaging.

“Staff at large, including me, were not informed,” said Geneva-based Ian Richards, president of the Staff Council at the United Nations. “All we received was an email (on Sept. 26) informing us about infrastructure maintenance work.” The council advocates for the welfare of employees of the world body.

Asked about the intrusion, one U.N. official told the AP it appeared “sophisticated” with the extent of damage unclear, especially in terms of personal, secret or compromising information that may have been stolen. The official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity to speak freely about the episode, said systems have since been reinforced.

Given the high skill level, it is possible a state-backed actor was behind it, the official said. “It’s as if someone were walking in the sand, and swept up their tracks with a broom afterward,” the official added. “There’s not even a trace of a clean-up.”

The leaked Sept. 20 report says logs that would have betrayed the hackers’ activities inside the U.N. networks — what was accessed and what may have been siphoned out — were “cleared.” It also shows that among accounts known to have been accessed were those of domain administrators — who by default have master access to all user accounts in their purview.

“Sadly … still counting our casualties,” the report says.

Jake Williams, CEO of the cybersecurity firm Rendition Infosec and a former U.S. government hacker, said the fact that the hackers cleared the network logs indicates they were not top flight. The most skilled hackers — including U.S., Russian and Chinese agents — can cover their tracks by editing those logs instead of clearing them.

“The intrusion definitely looks like espionage,” said Williams, noting that the active directory component — where all users’ permissions are managed — from three different domains were compromised: those of United Nations offices in Geneva and Vienna and of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“This, coupled with the relatively small number of infected machines, is highly suggestive of espionage,” he said after viewing the report. “The attackers have a goal in mind and are deploying malware to machines that they believe serve some purpose for them.”

The U.N. is known to have been trying to patch its myriad IT systems for years, and Williams said any number of intelligence agencies from around the globe are likely interested in infiltrating it.

The hack was not severe at the U.N. human rights office, said its spokesman, Rupert Colville. “We face daily attempts to get into our computer systems,” he said. “This time, they managed, but it did not get very far. Nothing confidential was compromised.”

Clearly concerned that word of the hack could have a chilling effect on people reporting human rights violations to it, the office said in a statement issued later that it wanted to “assure all concerned parties” no sensitive information was compromised.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said earlier Wednesday that attack was “serious,” compromised “core infrastructure components” and was contained. T he earliest activity appeared to have come in July and was detected in August, he said in response to emailed questions. He said the world body does not have enough information to determine the author but added that “the methods and tools used in the attack indicate a high level of resource, capability and determination.”

Dujarric noted that the U.N. “detects and responds to multiple attacks of various level of sophistication on a daily basis.”

Peter Micek, general counsel of the digital civil liberties nonprofit AccessNow, said U.N. leadership made a “terrible decision” from an information-security standpoint by denying staff information about the breach.

“It’s best practice to alert people, let them know what they should look out for (including phishing attacks and social engineering) and inform them of what steps are being taken on their behalf,” he said.

Otherwise, you are compounding the threat, and a missed opportunity for a teaching moment becomes an example of “intransigence and obfuscation, which is unfortunate,” said Micek, who works with U.N. human rights workers to shore up their cyber-defenses.

The internal document from the U.N. Office of Information and Technology said 42 servers were “compromised” and another 25 were deemed “suspicious,” nearly all at the sprawling Geneva and Vienna offices. Three of the “compromised” servers belonged to Human Rights agency, which is located across town from the main U.N. office in Geneva, and two were used by the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe.

The report says a flaw in Microsoft’s SharePoint software was exploited by the hackers to infiltrate the networks but that the type of malware used was not known, nor had technicians identified the command and control servers on the internet used to exfiltrate information. Nor was it known what mechanism was used by the hackers to maintain their presence on the infiltrated networks.

Security researcher Matt Suiche, the Dubai-based founder of the cybersecurity firm Comae Technologies, reviewed the report and said it appeared entry was gained through an anti-corruption tracker at the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime.

The report mentions a range of IP addresses in Romania that may have been used to stage the infiltration, and Williams said one is reported to have some neighbors with a history of hosting malware.

Technicians at the United Nations office in Geneva, the world body’s European hub, on at least two occasions worked through weekends in recent months to isolate the local U.N. data center from the i nternet, re-write passwords and ensure the systems were clean. Twenty machines had to be rebuilt, the report says.

The hack comes amid rising concerns about cyber espionage.

Last week, U.N. human rights experts asked the U.S. government to investigate a suspected Saudi hack that may have siphoned data from the personal smartphone of Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and owner of The Washington Post, in 2018. On Tuesday, the online civil rights sleuths at Citizen Lab published a report on the attempted hack of the T he New York Times’s bureau chief in Beirut, Ben Hubbard, about the same time by a Saudi-linked group.

The U.N. human rights office is particularly sensitive, and could be a tempting target. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and her predecessors have denounced alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and in places as d iverse as Syria, Venezuela, Myanmar and Saudi Arabia.

Richards, of the U.N. Staff Council, complained of uncertainty over the safety of U.N. networks. “There’s a lot of our data that could have been hacked, and we don’t know what that data could be,” he said.

“How much should U.N. staff trust the information infrastructure the U.N. is providing them?” Richards asked. “Or should they start putting their information elsewhere?”

The Detailed Iran Coverup of Ukraine Plane Struck by a Missile

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(AP) — A leaked recording of an exchange between an Iranian air-traffic controller and an Iranian pilot purports to show that authorities immediately knew a missile had downed a Ukrainian jetliner after takeoff from Tehran, killing all 176 people aboard, despite days of denials by the Islamic Republic.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy acknowledged the recording’s authenticity in a report aired by a Ukrainian television channel on Sunday night.

In Tehran on Monday, the head of the Iranian investigation team, Hassan Rezaeifar, acknowledged the recording was legitimate and said that it was handed over to Ukrainian officials. A transcript of the recording, published by Ukrainian 1+1 TV channel, contains a conversation in Farsi between an air-traffic controller and a pilot reportedly flying a Fokker 100 jet for Iran’s Aseman Airlines from Iran’s southern city of Shiraz to Tehran.

“A series of lights like … yes, it is a missile, is there something?” the pilot calls out to the controller.

“No, how many miles? Where?” the controller asks.

The pilot responds that he saw the light by the Payam airport, near where the Guard’s Tor M-1 anti-aircraft missile was launched from. The controller says nothing has been reported to them, but the pilot remains insistent.

“It is the light of a missile,” the pilot says.

“Don’t you see anything anymore?” the controller asks.

“Dear engineer, it was an explosion. We saw a very big light there, I don’t really know what it was,” the pilot responds.

The controller then tries to contract the Ukrainian jetliner, but unsuccessfully.

Publicly accessible flight-tracking radar information suggests the Aseman Airlines aircraft, flight No. 3768, was close enough to Tehran to see the blast.

Iran’s Guard Accepts Responsibility for Plane Shootdown

In part from the NYT’s: Around midnight on Jan. 7, as Iran was preparing to launch a ballistic-missile attack on American military posts in Iraq, senior members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps deployed mobile antiaircraft defense units around a sensitive military area near Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport.

Iran was about to retaliate for the American drone strike that had killed Iran’s top military commander, Gen. Qassim Suleimani, in Baghdad five days earlier, and the military was bracing for an American counterstrike. The armed forces were on “at war” status, the highest alert level.

But in a tragic miscalculation, the government continued to allow civilian commercial flights to land and take off from the Tehran airport.Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Guards’ Aerospace Force, said later that his units had asked officials in Tehran to close Iran’s airspace and ground all flights, to no avail.

Iranian officials feared that shutting down the airport would create mass panic that war with the United States was imminent, members of the Guards and other officials told The Times. They also hoped that the presence of passenger jets could act as a deterrent against an American attack on the airport or the nearby military base, effectively turning planeloads of unsuspecting travelers into human shields.
After Iran’s missile attack began, the central air defense command issued an alert that American warplanes had taken off from the United Arab Emirates and that cruise missiles were headed toward Iran.

The officer on the missile launcher near the airport heard the warnings but did not hear a later message that the cruise missile alert was a false alarm.

The warning about American warplanes may have also been wrong. United States military officials have said that no American planes were in or near Iranian airspace that night.

When the officer spotted the Ukrainian jet, he sought permission to fire. But he was unable to communicate with his commanders because the network had been disrupted or jammed, General Hajizadeh said later.The officer, who has not been publicly identified, fired two missiles, less than 30 seconds apart.

General Hajizadeh, who was in western Iran supervising the attack on the Americans, received a phone call with the news.

“I called the officials and told them this has happened and it’s highly possible we hit our own plane,” he said later in a televised statement.General Hajizadeh advised the generals not to tell the rank-and-file air defense units for fear that it could hamper their ability to react quickly if the United States did attack.

“It was for the benefit of our national security because then our air defense system would be compromised,” Mr. Hajizadeh said in an interview with Iranian news media this week. “The ranks would be suspicious of everything.”The military leaders created a secret investigative committee drawn from the Guards’ aerospace forces, from the army’s air defense, and from intelligence and cyberexperts. The committee and the officers involved in the shooting were sequestered and ordered not to speak to anyone.

The committee examined data from the airport, the flight path, radar networks, and alerts and messages from the missile operator and central command. Witnesses — the officer who had pulled the trigger, his supervisors and everyone involved — were interrogated for hours.

The group also investigated the possibility that the United States or Israel may have hacked Iran’s defense system or jammed the airwaves.Senior commanders discussed keeping the shooting secret until the plane’s black boxes — the flight data and cockpit voice recorders — were examined and formal aviation investigations completed, according to members of the Guards, diplomats and officials with knowledge of the deliberations. That process could take months, they argued, and it would buy time to manage the domestic and international fallout that would ensue when the truth came out.

The government had violently crushed an anti-government uprising in November. But the American killing of General Suleimani, followed by the strikes against the United States, had turned public opinion around. Iranians were galvanized in a moment of national unity.

The authorities feared that admitting to shooting down the passenger plane would undercut that momentum and prompt a new wave of anti-government protests.

“They advocated covering it up because they thought the country couldn’t handle more crisis,” said a ranking member of the Guards who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “At the end, safeguarding the Islamic Republic is our ultimate goal, at any cost.”

That evening, the spokesman for the Joint Armed Forces, Brig. Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, told Iranian news media that suggestions that missiles struck the plane were “an absolute lie.”

Why did Iran lie about shooting down the Ukrainian plane ...  source, Aljizeera
On Thursday, as Ukrainian investigators began to arrive in Tehran, Western officials were saying publicly that they had evidence that Iran had accidentally shot down the plane.A chorus of senior Iranian officials — from the director of civil aviation to the chief government spokesman — issued statement after statement rejecting the allegations, their claims amplified on state media.

The suggestion that Iran would shoot down a passenger plane was a “Western plot,” they said, “psychological warfare” aimed at weakening Iran just as it had exercised its military muscle against the United States.

But in private, government officials were alarmed and questioning whether there was any truth to the Western claims. Mr. Rouhani, a seasoned military strategist himself, and his foreign minister, Javad Zarif, deflected phone calls from world leaders and foreign ministers seeking answers. Ignorant of what their own military had done, they had none to give.

Domestically, public pressure was building for the government to address the allegations.

Among the plane’s passengers were some of Iran’s best and brightest. They included prominent scientists and physicians, dozens of Iran’s top young scholars and graduates of elite universities, and six gold and silver medal winners of international physics and math Olympiads.

There were two newlywed couples who had traveled from Canada to Tehran for their weddings just days earlier. There were families and young children.

Their relatives demanded answers. Iranian social media began to explode with emotional commentary, some accusing Iran of murdering its own citizens and others calling such allegations treason.

Persian-language satellite channels operating from abroad, the main source of news for most Iranians, broadcast blanket coverage of the crash, including reports from Western governments that Iran had shot down the plane.

Mr. Rouhani tried several times to call military commanders, officials said, but they did not return his calls. Members of his government called their contacts in the military and were told the allegations were false. Iran’s civil aviation agency called military officials with similar results.

“Thursday was frantic,” Ali Rabiei, the government spokesman, said later in a news conference. “The government made back-to-back phone calls and contacted the armed forces asking what happened, and the answer to all the questions was that no missile had been fired.”
On Friday morning, Mr. Rabiei issued a statement saying the allegation that Iran had shot down the plane was “a big lie.”

Several hours later, the nation’s top military commanders called a private meeting and told Mr. Rouhani the truth.

Mr. Rouhani was livid, according to officials close to him. He demanded that Iran immediately announce that it had made a tragic mistake and accept the consequences.

The military officials pushed back, arguing that the fallout could destabilize the country.

Mr. Rouhani threatened to resign.

Canada, which had the most foreign citizens on board the plane, and the United States, which as Boeing’s home country was invited to investigate the crash, would eventually reveal their evidence, Mr. Rouhani said. The damage to Iran’s reputation and the public trust in the government would create an enormous crisis at a time when Iran could not bear more pressure.

As the standoff escalated, a member of Ayatollah Khamenei’s inner circle who was in the meeting informed the supreme leader. The ayatollah sent a message back to the group, ordering the government to prepare a public statement acknowledging what had happened.

Mr. Rouhani briefed a few senior members of his government. They were rattled.Mr. Abdi said the government’s actions had gone “far beyond” just a lie.

“There was a systematic cover-up at the highest levels that makes it impossible to get out of this crisis,” he said.

Iran’s National Security Council held an emergency meeting and drafted two statements, the first to be issued by the Joint Armed Forces followed by a second one from Mr. Rouhani.

As they debated the wording, some suggested claiming that the United States or Israel may have contributed to the accident by jamming Iran’s radars or hacking its communications networks.

But the military commanders opposed it. General Hajizadeh said the shame of human error paled compared with admitting his air defense system was vulnerable to hacking by the enemy.

Iran’s Civil Aviation Agency later said that it had found no evidence of jamming or hacking.

Are Voters this Stupid when it Comes to Bernie Sanders?

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The legislators on the Left are always voting for laws that protect us from ourselves, taking away independent thought and decisions. It is a double edge sword for sure, some people need others to make decisions for them.

Laws where an individual’s behavior hurts others in all forms does have some merit…but c’mon Bernie and the same goes for Vermont and Iowa or any Bernie voters across the nation.

Bernie Sanders raises $3.3 million in first 10 hours after ...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) in his first-ever campaign for the Senate made the legalization of all drug use one of the cornerstones of his policy platform.

Recruited in a 1972 special election as the Senate candidate for Vermont’s Liberty Union Party, Sanders promised that if elected, “All laws relating to prohibition of abortion, birth control, homosexual relations, and the use of drugs would be done away with,” the Rutland Daily Herald reported in December 1971.

“In a free society, individuals and not government have the right to decide what is best for their own lives, as long as their actions do not harm others,” Sanders said during the campaign for the seat he would eventually win in 2006. (source)

***

As the DEA explained in its 2019 National Drug Threat Assessment, also released Thursday, most synthetic opioids are produced in China and Mexico; methamphetamine and heroin are primarily Mexican, and much cocaine is produced in Colombia. All of the drugs are routinely smuggled over the porous southwestern border or, in the case of Chinese goods, sent in using the U.S. mail.

“We’re pleased that in 2018, drug overdose deaths declined over 4 percent overall, with even greater decreases—over 13 percent—in overdoses from controlled prescription opioids,” DEA acting administrator Uttam Dhillon said Thursday. “Many challenges remain, however, including the spread of fentanyl and methamphetamine across the country. DEA and its partners will continue to work diligently to combat the drug trafficking organizations that bring these deadly substances into our country and endanger the American people.”

As the drug crisis changes shape, lawmakers continue to struggle over how best to combat it. On Wednesday evening, the House of Representatives finally passed an extension of the DEA’s temporary scheduling of fentanyl’s synthetic analogs, giving law enforcement another year to prosecute traffickers in substances like acetyl fentanyl and carfentanil under the strictest section of the Controlled Substances Act. Eighty-six House Democrats, however, objected, with several taking to the floor to argue that a “public health” approach is preferable to the incarceration of drug dealers. (source)

***

Since fentanyl and carfentinil can be absorbed through the skin, eyes, or respiratory system, there is a very real danger for secondary exposures for firefighters and EMS personnel from drug residue on a patient’s clothing, furniture, and even carpeting. There have been numerous documented cases in the United States of firefighters and EMS personnel experiencing respiratory distress and other overdose symptoms after coming into incidental contact with fentanyl and carfentinil residue in the course of providing patient care. The lethality and ease of coming into contact with the drug underscores the need for firefighters and EMS personnel to exercise extreme caution when responding to suspected opioid-related calls. All responders should be careful to appropriately don and doff any personal protective equipment selected for use when responding to these calls.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration recently published a handbook and roll call video to educate first responders on the dangers presented by fentanyl and carfentinil. Fire chiefs should work closely with their medical directors to review this information and design protocols to protect firefighters and EMS personnel from exposures to these dangerous narcotics. Fire chiefs also should maintain regular contact with their law enforcement partners to understand which narcotics may be most prevalent in their communities. (source)

*** Has Bernie explained any of that? Not so much. Consider the real destruction of the thousands and thousands of the narcotic generation and the labor output competition with other nations.

Bernie sees the “War on Drugs” as a costly, destructive, and ineffective policy. Current drug laws have not worked. After spending billions of dollars and destroying millions of lives, there has been no real decrease in drug accessibility or use, as evidenced by the opioid epidemic, the rising rates of heroin use, and the scourge of meth. Bernie believes treatment, not punishment, is the answer, and he’s repeatedly introduced legislation to extensively reform the criminal justice system along these lines.

War on Drugs: The fifty year war on drugs is a failed policy that has led to mass incarceration of nonviolent offenders and has unfairly targeted people of color.

Treatment for Drug Offenders: Nonviolent drug offenders should not be incarcerated. Instead, they should have access to affordable treatment to address their drug dependencies.

Legalize Marijuana: Marijuana ought to be legalized.

Addressing the Heroin and Opioid Epidemics : Heroin and opioid abuse is at epidemic levels, and the U.S. is not addressing the crisis with the urgency and seriousness that is required. We must address this crisis by providing resources, proper treatment and healthcare professionals to the communities struggling with this epidemic.

Here’s a link to Bernie’s plan to legalize marijuana and his comprehensive plan, Justice and Safety for All,  to reform the criminal justice system.

 

 

So, Who Stole John Solomon’s Laptop?

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The reader is invited to apply some strategic thinking on this one. Those journalists doing exceptional investigative work seem to have some very odd things happen to them including Sharyl Attkisson. Remember her and her work with Fast and Furious and Benghazi and how her home computer was attacked?

Okay, so read on but perhaps Solomon should have been more security conscious. It was found later, in just enough time for the thief to copy the full hard-drive.

On the night before the Senate impeachment trial began, someone broke into veteran Washington investigative journalist John Solomon’s car, which was parked near the White House, and stole his laptop, according to a D.C. Metropolitan Police Department report obtained by RealClearInvestigations.

John Solomon: DOJ watchdog's FISA report will have '6 to ...

The computer contained notes on Ukraine and former Vice President Joe Biden and other sensitive information, Solomon said in an interview. He said he was preparing to launch a new podcast and news site at the time.

Though the laptop has since been recovered, the investigation is still open. “The case has been assigned a detective and is under investigation,” MPD spokesman Sean Hickman told RCI.

The Secret Service is also involved in the matter, which appears suspicious. Break-ins are relatively rare in the high-security area where the crime occurred, just outside the White House perimeter, and a sophisticated device appears to have been used to get into the vehicle.

In the early evening of Jan. 20, the police report states, Solomon’s Apple MacBook laptop and computer bag, valued at around $1,800, were stolen from his 2019 Toyota SUV parked at 1776 F St. NW, across from the White House’s Eisenhower Executive Office Building. No windows were broken, and there were no other signs of forced entry. Authorities suspect the thief or thieves used an electronic jamming device to open the car door lock.

Solomon said that, other than the bag, nothing else was stolen from his car, including cash he used for the Metro.

The computer and bag, which also contained his U.S. Capitol press security badge, were discovered the next day nearly a block away from where his car had been parked. The contents of the bag had been dumped out on a picnic bench near the FDIC building. The location had no security cameras, so there is no known video surveillance footage that can be reviewed. Authorities described it as one of the few “dark spots” in the area.

Solomon, who noted that an iPod was missing from his bag, says he is working with computer forensics experts to determine if any of his laptop information was exploited or if his hard drive was scanned within the period the laptop went missing.

“It’s a pretty professional job,” he said of the break-in, “but it’s probably just a coincidence.”

“It was probably just a street criminal searching for pass codes,” he added. “Or it could be someone searching for my Ukraine stuff. We don’t know at this point.”

An award-winning investigative reporter, Solomon has been a political target in recent months.

In December, House impeachment manager Adam Schiff released a report that published Solomon’s phone records. The Democratic leader cited Solomon no fewer than 35 times in his impeachment report. He added Solomon’s phone call history in a spreadsheet he compiled in the footnotes section of the report, which claimed Solomon reported “conspiracy theories” in The Hill newspaper to help President Trump “push false narratives” about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election in favor of Hillary Clinton, as well as Biden’s attempts as vice president beginning late 2015 to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating a gas industry oligarch whose company paid his son millions of dollars.

Solomon, who previously worked for the Associated Press and Washington Post, suspects Schiff was singling him out as part of a political smear campaign.

Earlier From Paul Sperry’s Notebook: “Whistleblower” Censorship at Facebook and in Senate

“I’m the only [reporter] who ends up having his records released,” Solomon said in a recent interview with Fox Business News anchor Lou Dobbs.

“It makes me wonder whether it’s a political payback, because a few months ago, I wrote a story exposing the fact that Chairman Schiff had met with Glenn Simpson at the sidelines of the Aspen Institute at a time when he shouldn’t have been having contact with Glenn Simpson,” he added. “It feels like a political payback.”

Congress had been investigating Simpson, whose opposition research firm Fusion GPS was hired by the Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Trump in 2016. Simpson hired former British intelligence officer and FBI informant Christopher Steele to compile the discredited Trump-Russia “dossier” the Obama administration used to spy on a Trump campaign adviser. Some of the spy warrants were declared invalid because the government made “material misstatements” in obtaining them, according to a new court order.

In early 2019, moreover, Solomon reportedly was put on a list of U.S. journalists whom then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch sought to have “monitored.”

An Obama holdover, Yovanovitch was ousted as ambassador last May after Solomon reported that she tried to block investigations into Ukrainian meddling and corruption tied to the previous administration. She subsequently testified before Schiff’s impeachment committee. On Friday it was reported that she had retired from the State Department.