Author Archives: Denise Simon

Harvard Arrests, Coronavirus and China, Related?

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One has to apply some critical thinking here. The money clue –> Unbeknownst to Harvard University beginning in 2011, Lieber became a “Strategic Scientist” at Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in China and was a contractual participant in China’s Thousand Talents Plan from in or about 2012 to 2017. Wuhan is ground-zero for the virus. The United States along with the Center for Disease Control has offered substantial assistance to China providing expertise including microbiology, immunology and virology relating directly to the coronavirus.  but China refused. Hummm. The U.S. patent office has approved several patent applications relating to the virus, the most recent in 2008 from what appears to be from a team from Vanderbilt University.

A close friend found another interesting event recently held event from October 2019 that was hosted in New York by Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation called Event 201. 130 people attended to discuss pandemics. A good takeaway document discussing pandemic communications is found here. Note we are not getting all the real details from China as Beijing controls all media. Further, there will be false posts and articles in various forms in world media, so do your work.

5e2ef8505bc79c4a4842bf93 Useful map details and updates found here.

You be the judge.

 

Department of Justice
Office of Public Affairs
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Harvard University Professor and Two Chinese Nationals Charged in Three Separate China Related Cases

The Department of Justice announced today that the Chair of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department and two Chinese nationals have been charged in connection with aiding the People’s Republic of China.

Dr. Charles Lieber, 60, Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, was arrested this morning and charged by criminal complaint with one count of making a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement.  Lieber will appear this afternoon before Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler in federal court in Boston, Massachusetts.

Yanqing Ye, 29, a Chinese national, was charged in an indictment today with one count each of visa fraud, making false statements, acting as an agent of a foreign government and conspiracy. Ye is currently in China.

Zaosong Zheng, 30, a Chinese national, was arrested on Dec. 10, 2019, at Boston’s Logan International Airport and charged by criminal complaint with attempting to smuggle 21 vials of biological research to China.  On Jan. 21, 2020, Zheng was indicted on one count of smuggling goods from the United States and one count of making false, fictitious or fraudulent statements.  He has been detained since Dec. 30, 2019.

Dr. Charles Lieber

According to court documents, since 2008, Dr. Lieber who has served as the Principal Investigator of the Lieber Research Group at Harvard University, which specialized in the area of nanoscience, has received more than $15,000,000 in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Department of Defense (DOD).  These grants require the disclosure of significant foreign financial conflicts of interest, including financial support from foreign governments or foreign entities. Unbeknownst to Harvard University beginning in 2011, Lieber became a “Strategic Scientist” at Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in China and was a contractual participant in China’s Thousand Talents Plan from in or about 2012 to 2017.  China’s Thousand Talents Plan is one of the most prominent Chinese Talent recruit plans that are designed to attract, recruit, and cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China’s scientific development, economic prosperity and national security.  These talent programs seek to lure Chinese overseas talent and foreign experts to bring their knowledge and experience to China and reward individuals for stealing proprietary information.  Under the terms of Lieber’s three-year Thousand Talents contract, WUT paid Lieber $50,000 USD per month, living expenses of up to 1,000,000 Chinese Yuan (approximately $158,000 USD at the time) and awarded him more than $1.5 million to establish a research lab at WUT.  In return, Lieber was obligated to work for WUT “not less than nine months a year” by “declaring international cooperation projects, cultivating young teachers and Ph.D. students, organizing international conference[s], applying for patents and publishing articles in the name of” WUT.

The complaint alleges that in 2018 and 2019, Lieber lied about his involvement in the Thousand Talents Plan and affiliation with WUT.  On or about, April 24, 2018, during an interview with investigators, Lieber stated that he was never asked to participate in the Thousand Talents Program, but he “wasn’t sure” how China categorized him.  In November 2018, NIH inquired of Harvard whether Lieber had failed to disclose his then-suspected relationship with WUT and China’s Thousand Talents Plan.  Lieber caused Harvard to falsely tell NIH that Lieber “had no formal association with WUT” after 2012, that “WUT continued to falsely exaggerate” his involvement with WUT in subsequent years, and that Lieber “is not and has never been a participant in” China’s Thousand Talents Plan.

Yanqing Ye

According to the indictment, Ye is a Lieutenant of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the armed forces of the People’s Republic of China and member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).  On her J-1 visa application, Ye falsely identified herself as a “student” and lied about her ongoing military service at the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), a top military academy directed by the CCP.  It is further alleged that while studying at Boston University’s (BU) Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering from October 2017 to April 2019, Ye continued to work as a PLA Lieutenant completing numerous assignments from PLA officers such as conducting research, assessing U.S. military websites and sending U.S. documents and information to China.

According to court documents, on April 20, 2019, federal officers interviewed Ye at Boston’s Logan International Airport. During the interview, it is alleged that Ye falsely claimed that she had minimal contact with two NUDT professors who were high-ranking PLA officers.  However, a search of Ye’s electronic devices demonstrated that at the direction of one NUDT professor, who was a PLA Colonel, Ye had accessed U.S. military websites, researched U.S. military projects and compiled information for the PLA on two U.S. scientists with expertise in robotics and computer science.  Furthermore, a review of a WeChat conversation revealed that Ye and the other PLA official from NUDT were collaborating on a research paper about a risk assessment model designed to decipher data for military applications.  During the interview, Ye admitted that she held the rank of Lieutenant in the PLA and admitted she was a member of the CCP.

Zaosong Zheng

In August 2018, Zheng entered the United States on a J-1 visa and conducted cancer-cell research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston from Sept. 4, 2018, to Dec. 9, 2019. It is alleged that on Dec. 9, 2019, Zheng stole 21 vials of biological research and attempted to smuggle them out of the United States aboard a flight destined for China.  Federal officers at Logan Airport discovered the vials hidden in a sock inside one of Zheng’s bags, and not properly packaged.  It is alleged that initially, Zheng lied to officers about the contents of his luggage, but later admitted he had stolen the vials from a lab at Beth Israel.  Zheng stated that he intended to bring the vials to China to use them to conduct research in his own laboratory and publish the results under his own name.

The charge of making false, fictitious and fraudulent statements provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000.  The charge of visa fraud provides for a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000.  The charge of acting as an agent of a foreign government provides for a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000. The charge of conspiracy provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000.  The charge of smuggling goods from the United States provides for a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000.  Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, United States Attorney Andrew E. Lelling; Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston Field Division Joseph R. Bonavolonta; Michael Denning, Director of Field Operations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Boston Field Office; Leigh-Alistair Barzey, Special Agent in Charge of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, Northeast Field Office; Philip Coyne, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General; and William Higgins, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Office of Export Enforcement, Boston Field Office made the announcement. Assistant U.S. Attorneys B. Stephanie Siegmann, Jason Casey and Benjamin Tolkoff of Lelling’s National Security Unit are prosecuting these cases with the assistance of trial attorneys William Mackie and David Aaron at the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.

The details contained in the charging documents are allegations. The defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

These case are part of the Department of Justice’s China Initiative, which reflects the strategic priority of countering Chinese national security threats and reinforces the President’s overall national security strategy. In addition to identifying and prosecuting those engaged in trade secret theft, hacking and economic espionage, the initiative will increase efforts to protect our critical infrastructure against external threats including foreign direct investment, supply chain threats and the foreign agents seeking to influence the American public and policymakers without proper registration.

 

75th Anniversary of the Holocaust Liberation

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1.1 million were herded like sheep through the gates of death. Survivors are few today and their stories are fading from history. Take some time to remember and then share some facts as noted below. #NeverAgain

Most people are familiar with the names of the major concentration camps – Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Treblinka, for example – but few realize that these were not the only places where Jews and other prisoners were held by the Nazis. Each of the 23 main camps had subcamps, nearly 900 of them in total. These included camps with euphemistic names, such as “care facilities for foreign children,” where pregnant prisoners were sent for forced abortions.

Image result for holocaust photos

The Nazis established about 110 camps starting in 1933 to imprison political opponents and other undesirables. The number expanded as the Third Reich expanded and the Germans began occupying parts of Europe. When the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum first began to document all of the camps, the belief was that the list would total approximately 7,000. However, researchers found that the Nazis actually established about 42,500 camps and ghettoes between 1933 and 1945. This figure includes 30,000 slave labor camps; 1,150 Jewish ghettoes, 980 concentration camps; 1,000 POW camps; 500 brothels filled with sex slaves; and thousands of other camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm; Germanizing prisoners or transporting victims to killing centers. Berlin alone had nearly 3,000 camps.

These camps were used for a range of purposes including: forced-labor camps, transit camps which served as temporary way stations, and extermination camps, built primarily or exclusively for mass murder. From its rise to power in 1933, the Nazi regime built a series of detention facilities to imprison and eliminate so-called “enemies of the state.” Most prisoners in the early concentration camps were German Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, Roma (Gypsies), Jehovah‘s Witnesses, homosexuals, and persons accused of “asocial” or socially deviant behavior. These facilities were called “concentration camps” because those imprisoned there were physically “concentrated” in one location.

Millions of people were imprisoned, abused and systematically murdered in the various types of Nazi camps. Under SS management, the Germans and their collaborators murdered more than three million Jews in the killing centers alone. Only a small fraction of those imprisoned in Nazi camps survived. As many as 15-20 million people may have died in the various camps and ghettoes. (source)

Image result for holocaust photos  source

In the final days of the camp, the commanding SS officers “evacuated” 56,000 prisoners, most of them Jews. Leaving Auschwitz, however, did not mean the end of their ordeal. Instead, the SS ordered their charges into columns and marched them into the miserable winter. At first, the prisoners went on foot, monitored by officers who shot those who fell behind or tried to stay behind. Malnourished and inadequately clothed, the marchers were subject to random massacre. Eventually, they were shipped back toward Germany in open train cars. Up to 15,000 of the former camp inhabitants died on the death march.

“[The Nazis] wanted to continue to use those tens of thousands of prisoners for forced labor,” says Steven Luckert, senior program curator at the Levine Family Institute for Holocaust Education at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and former chief curator of the museum’s permanent collection. “Those prisoners got dispersed over all of the remaining camps.”

Back at Auschwitz, where by some estimates 9,000 prisoners remained, only a few SS guards maintained their watch. Most of the prisoners were too sick to move. “There was no food, no water, no medical care,” says Luckert. “The staff had all gone. [The prisoners] were just left behind to die.”

Among the last acts of the SS were to set fire to huge piles of camp documents, a last-ditch effort to hide the evidence. “They understood the enormity of the crimes they committed,” Luckert says.

Concentration and Extermination Camps and Major "Euthanasia" Centers

Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazi regime set up about 20,000 camps to imprison, exploit, and annihilate its declared enemies. This map shows major camps, grouped according to function. The term “concentration camp” applies to those camps built from 1933 on for the purpose of imprisoning political and ideological opponents of the regime and “racial enemies” under the pretense of “protective” or “preventative” custody. In the first years of the Nazi dictatorship, most of those imprisoned in the camps were Communists and Socialists, Social Democrats, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and individuals deemed “asocial.” After the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9, 1938, Jews in the German Reich were imprisoned en masse for the first time.

After the beginning of the Second World War, the camp system was quickly expanded and supplemented with POW camps and work camps in the occupied territories. Additionally, the camps began to function more and more as execution sites for members of particular groups, for example, Soviet POWs, members of the resistance, and partisans. To this end, gas chambers were built in the camps Auschwitz, Majdanek, Sachsenhausen, and Mauthausen starting in 1941. To implement the National Socialists’ plan for the “final solution of the Jewish question,” extermination camps were built in occupied Poland. The sole purpose of these camps was to carry out the mass murder of the European Jews in an efficient manner. The first of these camps, which were supposed to remain secret, was opened in December 1941 in Chelmno. In 1942, the camps Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka were built, and Auschwitz was equipped with a neighboring extermination camp, Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Jews from all over Europe were deported there via transit camps and were usually murdered within 24 hours after arrival.

The map also shows the places where the National Socialists carried out their secret “Euthanasia Program.” Starting in the fall of 1939, various institutions euthanized individuals who were deemed “unworthy to live” on account of either actual or alleged hereditary illnesses. After the revelation of the “Euthanasia Program” met with public protest, gas-administered euthanasia was halted in August 1941. It was replaced by lethal injections in “euthanasia clinics,” which continued until the end of the war. (source)

Have You Met Andrii Telizhenko?

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So, we have the phone call whistle-blower, Eric Ciaramella visiting the Obama White House according to visitor logs an estimated 200 times. What?

Ciaramella held the positions of National Security Council director for Ukraine under Susan Rice and director of Baltic and Eastern European Affairs in the Office of Vice President Joe Biden. Ciaramella was advised by Adam Schiff’s staff to fill out a complaint on the Trump/Zelensky phone call and given the text of the complaint, it is obvious it was drafted by lawyers likely out of Schiff’s office, maybe even Daniel Goldman himself.

Coming from Senator Rand Paul’s Twitter feed is this little gem posted on January 16, 2020.

Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) | Twitterhttps://twitter.comType a message

Anyway, Eric Ciaramella hosted a particular meeting on January 16, 2016 in room 230A at the Obama White House to discuss Ukraine, especially Burisma and the ‘Bidens’. Eric Ciaramella also hosted and chaired a meeting in Room 374 of the Eisenhower Executive Office, which seems to be a planning session to re-open an investigation of Paul Manafort which was to review the information that Alexandra Chalupa had gathered on Manafort and she was paid by the DNC to do so.

Artem Sytnyk, the director of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), a Soros group. Sytnyk was put on the public register of person who committed corrupt related crimes in Ukraine.

Others at the meeting included:

Jeffrey Cole: Resident Legal Advisor at U.S. Embassy, Ukraine (FBI)

Anna Iemelianova: Special Legal Counsel for the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine

Nazar Kholodnitsky: Ukraine’s Chief anti-corruption Prosecutor

Svitlana Pardus: Operations, DoJ, U.S. Embassy, Ukraine

David Sakvarelidze: Deputy General Prosecutor, fired in March of 2016

Andris Razans: Ambassador of Latvia in Belgium (important, read below)

Liz Zentos: National Security Council Director of Eastern Europe

Catherine L. Newcombe: Eurasia legal programs at the DoJ Criminal Division

This meeting was where the Ukraine corruption and the Biden/Burisma plot was launched to protect the infectious relationships.This meeting’s central objective was to tell Ukraine to no longer investigate/probe Burisma and to allow the FBI to take full control. Kiev did not agree and hence later Biden stepped in with his threat to withhold the $1 billion loan guarantees unless Ukraine complied.

Andrii Telizhenko was in that meeting too and has since been cooperating in full with Rudy Giuliani and is essentially a whistleblower.

My Dinner With Andrii | Talking Points Memo Andrii Telizhenko

Telizhenko was previously a political office in the Ukrainian embassy. Ukraine was financially desperate to follow all instructions put forth by the United States during the Obama administration and now is having to do the same with a new administration under President Trump and the new Ukraine president Zelensky for any kind of survival to maintain stability and not fall to Russian aggression or annexation.

Confusing right?

Then it seems the FBI did gain some control and curiously, a former U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General, John Buretta was hired to defend Burisma president Nikolay Zlochevskyi for income tax evasion and money-laundering. The truth be told, Burisma bought justice by agreeing to pay $7.4 million in back taxes and fines. Burisma can hire who they want and did but having Devon Archer and Hunter Biden on the Board did allow for political cover, access and favors.

In 2014, Prime Minister Theresa May held a summit for where leaders from a handful of countries attended to plot out a plan to provide Ukraine with some leadership guidance and financial assistance after the billions stolen by the former Ukraine president Yanukovich and others in the government from the coffers of the Ukrainian treasury and various banks. Over the years, in fact, hundreds of billions had been stolen…you read that right. Those monies traced to various countries and accounts (tax havens) around the world including South East Asia, the Caribbean, Cyprus, London, Latvia, Luxembourg, and even Liechtenstein.

One account held in a London bank belonged to Mykola Zlochevsky who at the time was not only the Ukraine Resource Minister but the CEO of Burisma. All the while, Russia had officially annexed Crimea and had immediate plans to do the same with Ukraine. Ukraine had no money to fight a war and needed immediate financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund and guidance from the United States, hence then President Obama assigned the Ukraine portfolio to Vice President Biden. Various banks around the world that could be attributed to belonging to Ukraine, or by corrupt oligarchs were frozen. This was to stop the bleeding and begin a full and comprehensive investigation by various financial fraud experts of Western nations.

It is no wonder that big print and cable news media is attacking Rudy Giuliani as he as Trump’s personally attorney and former prosecutor has been investigating all of this for a very long time and has a cache of tangible evidence. To complicate matters even more, we have Andrii Derkach who initiated the criminal case of the interference in the U.S. elections.

In part from a long Guardian article published on April 12, 2017:

On 19 January, the day before Trump’s inauguration, Zlochevsky’s gas company announced it was becoming a funder of the Atlantic Council, a prominent Washington thinktank. The Atlantic Council declined to say exactly how much money the tycoon had offered, only that his donation had been between $100,000 and $249,000. A month later, Burisma hired a new director. Joseph Cofer Black does not appear to have any more experience of Ukraine than his colleague Hunter Biden but – as an ex-ambassador and a former director of the CIA’s counterterrorism centre under George W Bush – he is likely to have lots of useful contacts in Washington.

Zlochevsky’s last public appearance was in June 2016 at a Burisma-organised alternative energy forum, co-hosted in Monaco by Prince Albert II, who made the keynote speech. Photographs of the event showed Hunter Biden posing with various comfortably retired ex-politicians, wearing a blue suit twinned with highly-polished brown shoes. Zlochevsky was tanned and healthy in an open-necked shirt, while a more formally dressed Prince Albert placed a solicitous hand on his back.

Perhaps there should be witnesses in the Trump impeachment trial in the Senate, in fact there should be 200-300 of them and not only should Hunter Biden and the whistleblower be among the witness list, but Eric Holder needs to be on the hot seat too.

Complicated…right?

 

Soros Launches $1B Progressive University

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This advanced education system may have 3 or more campuses including one in the Unites States at Bard College in New York. Swell huh, seems the courses will take on socialist/media/government and policy issues.
Brace for impact as you read about The Open Society University Network. Announced at DAVOS, Soros called President Trump a ‘con-man’ and the U.S. economy ‘over-heated’.

George Soros Gave Global Climate Strike Partners More than ...

Billionaire George Soros said he will commit $1 billion to start a global university to fight authoritarian governments and climate change, calling them twin challenges that threaten the survival of our civilization.

The Open Society University Network will offer an international platform for teaching and research, the 89-year-old said Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The university will be launched through a partnership of the Soros-backed Central European University and Bard College.

“As a long-term strategy our best hope lies in access to quality education, specifically an education that reinforces the autonomy of the individual by cultivating critical thinking and emphasizing academic freedom,” Soros said.

In his speech and a follow-up question and answer session, Soros covered a wide-range of issues, including the “overheated” U.S. economy, the dominance of Facebook Inc. and the autocratic rule of Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump, who he called a “con man and the ultimate narcissist.”

“Taking into account the climate emergency and worldwide unrest, it’s not an exaggeration to say that 2020 and the next few years will determine not only the fate of Xi and Trump, but also the fate of the world,” he said.

Soros also once again criticized Facebook for its failure to police the social media network.

“There’s nothing to stop them, and I think there is a kind of informal mutual assistance operation or agreement developing between Trump and Facebook,” Soros said. “Facebook will work together to re-elect Trump and Trump will work to protect Facebook.

Trump, he said, is responsible for overheating the economy. “An overheated economy can’t be kept boiling for too long,” he said.

Soros has hit on these themes in previous Davos speeches. Last year, the philanthropist warned of the “mortal danger” of China’s use of artificial intelligence to repress its citizens under the leadership of Xi, whom he called the most dangerous opponent of democracies.

He has also lashed out at social-media giants including Facebook and Google, saying they need to be regulated. Last year he compared them to gambling companies that foster addiction among users and said that they exploit the data they control.

Soros has become a lightning rod for his political views and philanthropic efforts. A longtime supporter and financial backer of progressive causes and Democratic politicians, he’s become a target of right-wing activists.

Soros closed his hedge fund and converted his firm into a family office. The $25 billion Soros Fund Management now mostly manages money for the Open Society Foundations, a worldwide network of philanthropies.

Carter Page is Due Big Money, Manafort May Get Relief

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The FISA Court released a few days ago a ruling that at least 2 (the last 2) of the 4 secret surveillance applications against Carter Page were in valid. The first 2 applications are under review and may see the same ruling.

So, former FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe are for sure on the legal hot seat as is Dana Boente. At the Department of Justice, at the time Rod Rosenstein had the final signature relying on the lower level FBI certifications of validations.
Carter Page has an excellent case now against the government for violations by the government for illegal search/surveillance/wire-tap(s) warrants and based on the timing, now in-prison Paul Manafort may have a case against the government as well. The Manafort case is not yet resolved based on timelines and use by the Mueller investigation.

This places more layers to the operatives in government perhaps as directed by the Democrat Party to use government power and people for explosive political missions. A new plateau of government collusion it seems.

The timing of this release appears to have some purpose and will affect the impeachment trial in the Senate where the Trump defense team may just use this information to their advantage and the House impeachment managers (Schiff/Nadler) and Speaker Pelosi will be working overtime to draft a twisted defense response.

Image result for fisa court carter page photo source/Forbes

Federalist: Authority granted to the federal government to secretly wiretap and spy on former Trump affiliate Carter Page was “not valid,” the nation’s top spy court noted in a secret ruling penned earlier this month. The order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which was created and authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), was initially signed and issued on January 7, 2020, but was not declassified and released until Thursday afternoon.

Judge James Boasberg, the current federal judge presiding over the FISA court, wrote in his order that at least two of the four FISA applications against Carter Page were unlawfully authorized. Additionally, according his order, the Department of Justice similarly concluded following the release of a sprawling investigate report on the matter by the agency’s inspector general that the government did not have probable cause that Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power. The FISA law states that American citizens cannot be secretly spied on by the U.S. government absent probable cause, based on valid evidence, that an American is unlawfully acting as a foreign agent.

“DOJ assesses that with respect to the applications in Docket Numbers 17-375 and 17-679, ‘if not earlier, there was insufficient predication to establish probable cause to believe that [Carter] Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power,’” Boasberg wrote, referring to the final two of the four FISA applications to spy on Page. “The Court understands the government to have concluded, in view of the material misstatements and omissions, that the Court’s authorizations in Docket Numbers 17-375 and 17-679 were not valid.”

Boasberg’s ruling noted that DOJ had not yet taken a position on the lawfulness of the first two applications against Page, but was currently collecting information to assess whether those two spy applications were also invalid. The invalid applications specified by Boasberg were dated April 7 and June 29 of 2017. The false and invalid April 7 application was personally signed by James Comey, while the false and invalid June 29 application was signed by Andrew McCabe. Both men were referred for criminal prosecution by the inspector general. Former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who is alleged to have offered to wear a wire against President Donald Trump, also signed off on the false June 29 FISA warrant against Page.

The FISA court order also noted that it is a federal crime for any federal official to “intentionally…disclose[] or use[] information obtained under color of law by electronic surveillance, knowing or having any reason to know that the information was obtained through electronic surveillance not authorized” by law. The following sentence of Boasberg’s ruling is redacted, raising questions about whether the government used any information obtained pursuant to the now-invalid Page surveillance warrants in other cases.

The final warrant against Page overlapped with former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The final three-month authorization to spy on Page was signed nearly six weeks after Mueller was appointed, meaning that Mueller may have had real-time access to and utilized nearly five months worth of surveillance of Page during the course of Mueller’s investigation. If his office used any of the information in subsequent cases, the declaration that the final two spy warrants against Page were invalid could potentially nullify previous or future convictions sought by Mueller’s office.

Surveillance under FISA is not limited to the individual targeted, as the government also surveils individuals with whom the target communicates, and individuals with whom those individuals communicate. That process is called the “two-hop” rule and allows the government to spy on and collect information and communications from individuals who are two degrees separated from the actual surveillance target. Therefore, even if Page never personally spoke to Trump on the phone, the government could still eavesdrop on Trump’s conversations if Page spoke to someone who had spoken to or electronically communicated with the president. It is not known whether the government used the two-hop process on Page to sweep up information from former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, or even the president himself.

In his January 7 order, Boasberg directed DOJ to retain and sequester all information and evidence relevant to both the Carter Page applications, the inspector general investigation of FISA abuse, and any additional DOJ investigations related to or spawned by the inspector general’s report. Boasberg told DOJ to provide all of the required information to the FISA court no later than January 28.