What is it with CrowdStrike?

Posted on January 17, 2021January 17, 2021 by

CrowdStrike, The DNC's Security Firm, Was Under Contract ... CrowdStrike was working on behalf of the DNC, the company was also under contract with the FBI for unspecified technical services. According to a US federal government spending database, CrowdStrike’s “period of performance” on behalf of the FBI was between July 2015 and July 2016. CrowdStrike’s findings regarding the DNC server breach — which continue to this day to be cited as authoritative by everyone from former FBI Director James Comey, to NBC anchor Megyn Kelly — were issued in June 2016, when the contract was still active. source

Some may believe this is all old news. It maybe years old, however it is remains unsolved. With a new Biden administration, it is important that many, many of those old players are now part of the Biden presidential operation, especially Susan Rice and the others that did unmasking. Beware of what comes.

Meanwhile…..when governments collude…especially intelligence agencies and operatives….

Real Clear Politics published in May of 2020 the following:
CrowdStrike, the cyber-security firm that first accused Russia of hacking Democratic Party emails and served as a critical source for U.S. intelligence officials in the years-long Trump-Russia probe, privately acknowledged more than two years ago that it had no evidence that Russian hackers stole emails from the Democratic National Committee’s server.

CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry’s admission under oath, in a recently declassified December 2017 interview before the House Intelligence Committee, raises new questions about whether Special Counsel Robert Mueller, intelligence officials and Democrats misled the public. The allegation that Russia stole Democratic Party emails from Hillary Clinton, John Podesta and others and then passed them to WikiLeaks helped trigger the FBI’s probe into now debunked claims of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia to steal the 2016 election. The CrowdStrike admissions were released just two months after the Justice Department retreated from its its other central claim that Russia meddled in the 2016 election when it dropped charges against Russian troll farms it said had been trying to get Trump elected.

And the Crowdstrike CEO is proud of the work his company does with the FBI. Going back further, it is noted: Attorney Andrew Bagley has been employed by the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike since January 2015; this company was involved deeply in the Democratic National Committee (DNC) hacking debacle. In 2010, Bagley served as a visiting researcher at the Link Campus University in Rome; while there, his résumé notes that Bagley, “Conducted research and held discussions with Italian and American prosecutors, special agents, and intelligence officials about intelligence analysis, national security, cybersecurity, and counterterrorism policy.”

According to Bagley’s online résumé, he served as the E-Discovery Technical Advisor to the FBI, conducting legal research, advising on technical issues, and drafting policy for the Discovery Coordination and Policy Unit within the FBI, from 2012 to 2015.

In its capacity as attorney for the DNC, Perkins Coie – through another of its partners, Michael Sussman – is also the law firm that retained CrowdStrike, the cyber security outfit, upon learning in April 2016 that the DNC’s servers had been hacked.

Interesting: Despite the patent importance of the physical server system to the FBI and Intelligence-Community investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the Bureau never examined the DNC servers. Evidently, the DNC declined to cooperate to that degree, and the Obama Justice Department decided not to issue a subpoena to demand that the servers be turned over (just like the Obama Justice Department decided not to issue subpoenas to demand the surrender of critical physical evidence in the Clinton e-mails investigation).

Instead, the conclusion that Russia is responsible for the invasion of the DNC servers rests on the forensic analysis conducted by CrowdStrike. Rather than do its own investigation, the FBI relied on a contractor retained by the DNC’s lawyers.

Link International - Link Campus University of Rome Link University, Rome

As Senator Lindsey Graham published the now declassified documents/testimonies on RussiaGate, CrowdStrike comes into view again. Why? Well, the FBI has a long and comprehensive history with the Link Campus in Rome and now we learn more about Joseph Mifsud. He was on staff at the Link Campus in Italy. Remember how, AG Barr flew to Italy for some one on one interviews? Those he interviewed remain unknown.Could AG Barr have met with Vincenzo Scotti or maybe even Mifsud himself? As for Link Campus University, Italy: Mifsud, Scotti, and Frattini were all employed by this Italian university. ‘Enzo’ Scotti is Scotti is an Italian politician and member of Christian Democracy. He was Minister of the Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs. And it could be that Mifsud is hiding in Russia….just a suggestion.

As intelligence expert Chris Blackburn notes on Twitter, leafing through the minutes, “the FBI knew that Joseph Mifsud was working with Italian intelligence figures-trainers at the Link Campus in Rome. Because the FBI worked there, too. Of course Mueller didn’t want to include it in his report.” Nothing but “Russian agent”, then. As RealClearInvestigations points out, after Mifsud was identified as the man who would talk to Papadopoulos, Mueller’s team described him as someone with important Russian contacts. This description of the Maltese lecturer, however, ignored Mifsud’s own ties to Western governments, politicians and institutions, including the CIA, FBI and British intelligence services. It’s really curious that, despite Mifsud’s central role in the investigation, the FBI conducted only a brief interview with him in an atrium of a Washington, D.C., hotel in February 2017. Mueller’s team later claimed that Mifsud provided false statements to FBI agents but did not charge him as happened with Papadopoulos. How could he be a Russian agent? And if he did, why wasn’t he questioned?
Then there is CrowdStrike and Ukraine, or is there?

FILE – CrowdStrike co-founder and CTO Dmitri Alperovitch speaks during the Reuters Media and Technology Summit in New York, June 11, 2012.

After CrowdStrike released its Ukraine report, company co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch claimed it provided added evidence of Russian election interference. In both hacks, he said, the company found malware used by “Fancy Bear,” a group with ties to Russian intelligence agencies.

CrowdStrike’s claims of heavy Ukrainian artillery losses were widely circulated in U.S. media.

On Thursday, CrowdStrike walked back key parts of its Ukraine report.

The company removed language that said Ukraine’s artillery lost 80 percent of the Soviet-era D-30 howitzers, which used aiming software that purportedly was hacked. Instead, the revised report cites figures of 15 to 20 percent losses in combat operations, attributing the figures to IISS.

The original CrowdStrike report was dated Dec. 22, 2016, and the updated report was dated March 23, 2017.

The company also removed language saying Ukraine’s howitzers suffered “the highest percentage of loss of any … artillery pieces in Ukraine’s arsenal.”
***
Just a few months ago, in fact June of 2020, CrowdStrike on their website apparently felt compelled to put forth the following detail for reasons that may be coming clear.
June 5, 2020 UPDATE

Blog update following the release of the testimony by Shawn Henry, CSO and President of CrowdStrike Services, before the House Intelligence Committee that was recently declassified.

What was CrowdStrike’s role in investigating the hack of the DNC?

CrowdStrike was contacted on April 30, 2016 to respond to a suspected breach. We began our work with the DNC on May 1, 2016, collecting intelligence and analyzing the breach. After conducting this analysis and identifying the adversaries on the network, on June 10, 2016 we initiated a coordinated remediation event to ensure the intruders were removed and could not regain access. That remediation process lasted approximately 2-3 days and was completed on June 13, 2016.

Why did the DNC contact CrowdStrike?

The DNC contacted CrowdStrike to respond to a suspected cyber attack impacting its network. The DNC was first alerted to the hack by the FBI in September 2015. According to testimony by DNC IT contractor Yared Tamene Wolde-Yohannes, the FBI attributed the breach to the Russian Government in September 2015 (page 7).

Why did the DNC hire CrowdStrike instead of just working with the FBI to investigate the hack?

The FBI doesn’t perform incident response or network remediation services when organizations need to get back to business after a breach.

CrowdStrike is a leader in protecting customers around the world from cyber threats. It is common for organizations to hire third-party industry experts, like CrowdStrike, to investigate and remediate cyber attacks when they suspect a breach even if they are collaborating with law enforcement. As John Carlin, former Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division at The Department of Justice, testified before the House Intelligence Committee (cited from page 21 of his testimony):

“A lot of — outside of any political organization, companies, most corporations, they often would use these third party contractors, who they hired through their own counsel, and maximize the control from the point of view of the victim.”
What the heck is going on here for real? Outside of this little website of mine, is anyone else going deeper and seeking truths when it comes to CrowdStrike, Perkins Coie, Link University and the FBI…much less the all things DNC?
Other key citations for reference include:

https://www.voanews.com/usa/cyber-firm-rewrites-part-disputed-russian-hacking-report

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/scandals-collide-dossier-dnc-server-perkins-coie/

https://www.torial.com/satoshi.nakamoto/portfolio/355396

Chinese Communist Party is “inside the gates”

Posted on January 17, 2021January 17, 2021 by Denise Simon

In part from Breitbart:

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo warned lawmakers that the threat from the Chinese Communist Party is “inside the gates” during a meeting with House Republican lawmakers on Friday.

Pompeo told members of the conservative Republican Study Committee that as a former lawmaker, he is aware of the threat posed by China but that he did not appreciate “the scope and the scale and the nature” of how close the threat is until he became Central Intelligence Agency director.

This CCP infection inside the United States goes beyond Senator Feinstein, Congressman Eric Swalwell, former California Senator, Barbara Boxer or even closing the Chinese embassy in Houston. There is the Thousand Talents Program that has wormed it's way through academia and the Confucius Institutes.

How about a little known Florida congresswoman, Stephanie Murphy (D-FL)? She is quite dedicated to China due in part to her husband Sean and his manufacturing company, 3N2. His company produces sports equipment/apparel in China. Further, she advocates for all the democrat policy points including open-border policies and more studies into “gun-violence”. Crazy enough, Murphy actually joined a small group of Democrats in calling to remove tariffs on the Chinese government.

None of this is actually new when it comes to Stephanie Murphy, in fact it goes back as far as 2017. Did anyone notice?

When you are on social media, do you actually work hard to determine if you are being trolled by some foreign entity? We are quite aware of Russian disinformation but going back years, at least to 2016 (interesting year), China's own troll farm has been just as successful in the social media sphere and you are likely a victim. DC politicians are just as likely to be willing accomplices.

There is or was a Chinese operation called the 50-centers and you probably clicked on a lot of their social media posts.

The Left-leaning policy organization Foreign Policy published the following in 2016.

A May 17 paper written by professors at Harvard, Stanford, and the University of California, San Diego provides the most detailed and ambitious description of China’s 50-centers available to date. It confirms the existence of a “massive secret operation” in China pumping out an estimated 488 million fabricated social media posts per year, part of an effort to “regularly distract the public and change the subject” from any policy-related issues that threaten to anger citizens enough to turn them out onto the streets. But the research finds no evidence these 50-centers are, in fact, paid 50 cents, nor does it find they engage in direct and angry argument with their opponents. Instead, they are mostly bureaucrats already on the public payroll, responding to government directives at a time of heightened tension to flood social media with pro-government cheerleading.

photo

Understanding the behavior of pro-government netizens is important, given the stakes. In the past two and a half years, the Chinese government has used a combination of muscle and guile to cow online opinion leaders into submission, muzzling social media as a political force, and leaching public dialogue of much of its independence. But beneath the peppy, pablum-filled surface that has resulted, Chinese social media remains a contested space. In countless online chat rooms, bulletin boards, and Weibo threads, Chinese social media roils with the same ideological debates that also increasingly consume Chinese academics and elites.

Broadly speaking, the clash pits so-called leftists — that is, conservatives and neo-Confucianists who marry stout Chinese nationalism, a yearning for reconstructed socialism, and the quest for a reversion to hierarchy and filial piety — against rightists, or reformists, who continue to espouse what a Westerner would recognize as universal values, such as civil and human rights, government transparency, and democracy and constitutionalism. It’s more common for the two camps to exchange barbs than ideas. The leftists label the rightists sellouts, turncoats, and “public intellectuals,” the latter delivered with an implicit sneer. The rightists often call the leftists “50-centers,” regardless of who really pays their bills.

What is worse is a separate issue known as the Chinese cyber-attacks. A for instance however:

More than two dozen universities in the United States and around the world were targeted as part of an effort by the People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese military, to build up its naval and submarine forces.

iDefense, one security firm, tracked the Chinese cyberattacks to a hacking group known variously as Temp.Periscope, Leviathan or Mudcarp. A second firm, FireEye, calls the hacking group APT40 or Temp.Periscope.

FireEye said the operations appear linked to Chinese activities in the South China Sea, where Beijing has built disputed islands and deployed advanced missiles on them beginning a year ago. The Chinese military hacker unit in charge of that region is the Chengdu-based Unit 78020.

The 27 universities included the University of Hawaii, the University of Washington and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Take caution, judge slowly. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is right.

FBI is Investigating a Mysterious Postcard

Posted on January 12, 2021January 12, 2021 by Denise Simon

SolarWinds hackers also breached the US NNSA nuclear ... source

(Reuters) – The FBI is investigating a mysterious postcard sent to the home of cybersecurity firm FireEye’s chief executive days after it found initial evidence of a suspected Russian hacking operation on dozens of U.S. government agencies and private American companies.

U.S. officials familiar with the postcard are investigating whether it was sent by people associated with a Russian intelligence service due its timing and content, which suggests internal knowledge of last year’s hack well before it was publicly disclosed in December.

Moscow has denied involvement in the hack, which U.S. intelligence agencies publicly attributed here to Russian state actors.

The postcard carries FireEye’s logo, is addressed to CEO Kevin Mandia, and calls into question the ability of the Milpitas, California-based firm to accurately attribute cyber operations to the Russian government.

People familiar with Mandia’s postcard summarized its content to Reuters. It shows a cartoon with the text: “Hey look Russians” and “Putin did it!”

The opaque message itself did not help FireEye find the breach, but rather arrived in the early stages of its investigation. This has led people familiar with the matter to believe the sender was attempting to “troll” or push the company off the trail by intimidating a senior executive.

Reuters could not determine who sent the postcard. U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies are spearheading the probe into its origin, the sources familiar said.

The FBI did not provide comment. A FireEye representative declined to discuss the postcard.

A disinformation researcher from the Rand Corporation, Todd Helmus, received a similar postcard in 2019, based on an image of it Helmus posted to Twitter. Helmus, who studies digital propaganda, said he received the postcard after testifying to Congress about Russian disinformation tactics.

FireEye discovered the Russian hacking campaign – now known as “Solorigate” for how it leveraged supply chain vulnerabilities in network management firm Solarwinds – because of an anomalous device login from within FireEye’s network. The odd login triggered a security alert and subsequent investigation, which led to the discovery of the operation.

FireEye worked closely with Microsoft to determine that the infiltration at FireEye in fact represented a hacking campaign that struck at least eight federal agencies including the Treasury, State and Commerce Departments.

When the postcard was sent, FireEye had not yet determined who was behind the cyberattack. A person familiar with the postcard investigation said “this is not typically the Russian SVR’s playbook” but “times are rapidly changing.” SVR is an acronym for the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia.

A former U.S. intelligence official said the postcard reminded him of a now public mission by U.S. Cyber Command where they sent private messages to Russian hackers ahead of the 2018 congressional elections in the United States.

“The message then from the U.S. was ‘watch your back, we see you’ similar to here,” the former official said.

The extent of the damages tied to the U.S. government hack remains unclear. Emails belonging to senior officials were stolen from an unclassified network at the Treasury and Commerce Departments. FBI says 'ongoing' SolarWinds hack was probably the work ...

Now known in the cyber world, the heck of Solarwinds continues to rock the nation.

Kaspersky reports finding code similarities between the Sunburst backdoor in SolarWinds’ Orion platform and a known backdoor, Kazuar, which Palo Alto Networks in 2017 associated with the Turla threat group. Kaspersky is cautious about attribution, and notes that there are several possibilities:

Sunburst and Kazuar are the work of the same threat group.
Sunburst’s developers borrowed from Kazuar.
Both backdoors derived from a common source.
Kazuar’s developers jumped ship to another threat group that produced Kazuar.
Whoever developed Sunburst deliberately introduced subtle false flag clues into their code.

Reuters points out that Estonian intelligence services have long attributed Turla activity to Russia’s FSB (which was unavailable to Reuters for comment).

In an updated Solorigate advisory, CISA released detection and mitigation advice for post-compromise activity in the Microsoft 365 (M365) and Azure environment.

The US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio has responded to Solorigate by requiring that court documents be filed on paper, the Columbus Dispatch reports.

***

Reuters: Investigators at Moscow-based cybersecurity firm Kaspersky said the “backdoor” used to compromise up to 18,000 customers of U.S. software maker SolarWinds closely resembled malware tied to a hacking group known as “Turla,” which Estonian authorities have said operates on behalf of Russia’s FSB security service.

The findings are the first publicly-available evidence to support assertions by the United States that Russia orchestrated the hack, which compromised a raft of sensitive federal agencies and is among the most ambitious cyber operations ever disclosed.

Moscow has repeatedly denied the allegations. The FSB did not respond to a request for comment.

Costin Raiu, head of global research and analysis at Kaspersky, said there were three distinct similarities between the SolarWinds backdoor and a hacking tool called “Kazuar” which is used by Turla.

The similarities included the way both pieces of malware attempted to obscure their functions from security analysts, how the hackers identified their victims, and the formula used to calculate periods when the viruses lay dormant in an effort to avoid detection.

“One such finding could be dismissed,” Raiu said. “Two things definitely make me raise an eyebrow. Three is more than a coincidence.”

Confidently attributing cyberattacks is extremely difficult and strewn with possible pitfalls. When Russian hackers disrupted the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in 2018, for example, they deliberately imitated a North Korean group to try and deflect the blame.

Raiu said the digital clues uncovered by his team did not directly implicate Turla in the SolarWinds compromise, but did show there was a yet-to-be determined connection between the two hacking tools.

It’s possible they were deployed by the same group, he said, but also that Kazuar inspired the SolarWinds hackers, both tools were purchased from the same spyware developer, or even that the attackers planted “false flags” to mislead investigators.

Security teams in the United States and other countries are still working to determine the full scope of the SolarWinds hack. Investigators have said it could take months to understand the extent of the compromise and even longer to evict the hackers from victim networks.

U.S. intelligence agencies have said the hackers were “likely Russian in origin” and targeted a small number of high-profile victims as part of an intelligence-gathering operation.

States Begin to Push Back on Big Tech Censorship

Posted on January 12, 2021January 12, 2021 by Denise Simon

Google abused its monopoly power, FTC experts found - Mar ... source

The nation is watching the actions of big tech and legislators are pursuing actions to be taken due to censorship. Existing law including anti-trust and new law is being reviewed and rightly so.

Below are a couple of states on the path in the legal realm. State AG’s as well as state legislators are accountable to protect respective citizens and their rights, however private corporations are not subject to 1st Amendment violations but other violations are on the table including abuse of user data and spying. Section 230 in the pivot point when it comes to Congressional action.

Big Tech's biased algorithms abuse consumers and limit ... source

Idaho:

Newsweek: Your T1 WiFi, an internet service provider based in northwestern Idaho, will implement firewalls that restrict access to Facebook and Twitter at its customers’ requests. The provider notified patrons of the new option in emails sent over the weekend. Although customers received an initial message that indicated they would need to opt out of firewalls to continue accessing both social networking sites, Your T1 WiFi later clarified that only those who prefer restrictions will see changes.

The internet provider said that all customers will be filtered into two separate lists, one that signals their interest in firewalls and another that denotes regular coverage. Bret Fink, the owner of Your T1 WiFi, told Newsweek on Monday that the company decided to restrict service this way after receiving numerous calls from individuals using its services. The customers requested that Facebook and Twitter become inaccessible to their respective households, citing concerns about “censorship,” as Your T1 WiFi noted in one of its recent emails.

“It has come to our Attention that Twitter and Facebook are engaged in Censorship of our Customers and Information,” the company wrote. A customer posted screenshots of the email to Twitter on Sunday evening, and Fink verified its contents in his comments to Newsweek.

“We have the past couple days been fielding calls from customers voicing the concern that they do not want these sites allowed to be displayed on their internet feed…and that they do not want their children to go to these sites,” the email continued. “They could do this themselves but some do not have the technical knowledge to do so and it would be very tiresome for us to do it for them and it would be expensive to visit each customer that wants this done.”

Even more interesting is Florida:

(WFLA) — Some Florida Republicans are calling for action against social media “censorship” after President Donald Trump was removed from several platforms last week.

Multiple bills have been filed in Florida’s 2021 Legislative Session to prevent de-platforming on the basis of political speech.

After an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter banned President Trump from their platforms. Facebook said it was banning Trump indefinitely, or at least through the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden. Twitter later followed suit and permanently suspended the @realDonaldTrump account due to “the risk of further incitement of violence.” Twitter also took action against the official @POTUS account.

Those moves by social media companies were applauded by Florida Democrats.

“We have never seen a president that would conduct himself in such a despicable way. So I think that his removal was justified,” State Sen. Perry Thurston (D-Fort Lauderdale) said.

Google, Apple and Amazon also took action to de-platform the conservative-leaning social media app Parler.

Florida Republicans like State Sen. Ray Rodrigues consider the actions an assault on free speech.

“It seems like big tech is using their resources to push their political agenda and to silence those who do not agree with them,” Rodrigues (R-Fort Myers) said.

Legislation filed in the Florida Senate would require social media companies to inform users why they were banned within 30 days. SB 520 – filed Monday by Sen. Danny Burgess (R-Zephyrhills) – would take effect July 1, 2021 if passed.

Twitch disables Trump’s account indefinitely

A bill in the House goes much further. HB 33 would allow users to sue if they’re banned for political or religious speech for a minimum of $75,000 in damages. The bill is sponsored by State Rep. Anthony Sabatini (R-Clermont).

“All we’re doing here is saying, ‘hey, there’s a new business regulation.’ If you’re ‘X’ amount of size, you cannot discriminate based on political viewpoint,” Sabatini said.

The House bill does allow social media companies to ban users for calls to violence, posting pornography, impersonation or if a court orders the account to be removed.

“The companies could still moderate but they can’t use the moderation exception to Section 230 to basically publish what it is they like and don’t like,” Sabatini explained.

While the Senate version currently doesn’t go as far as the House bill, the sponsor pledged to make it stronger as it moves through the Legislature.

If the legislation ultimately passes, it could potentially be used by President Trump – who is a Florida resident – to seek retribution for his bans from social media platforms.

Biden Inauguration Donors

Posted on January 10, 2021January 10, 2021 by Denise Simon

It is a cyber war of a financial order…against America..

Let’s begin here with Section 230 shall we? Full immunity…and never amended. Just how decent is big tech? Well on the heels of Alphabet, the parent company of Google giving exclusive assistance to then candidate Hillary Clinton and later as we find out that all big tech uses our data, which we are forced to approve is their terms of service as we are users, while they make big money off of us. Then we find out the conspiracy and collusion between all big tech operations against little and new Parler, much less thousands of other websites as competitors, big tech is more powerful than the Federal government.

Section 230 is a piece of Internet legislation in the United States, passed into law as part of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996 (a common name for Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996), formally codified as Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934 at 47 U.S.C. § 230.^[a] Section 230 generally provides immunity for website publishers from third-party content. At its core, Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an “interactive computer service” who publish information provided by third-party users:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

The statute in Section 230(c)(2) further provides “Good Samaritan” protection from civil liability for operators of interactive computer services in the removal or moderation of third-party material they deem obscene or offensive, even of constitutionally protected speech, as long as it is done in good faith.

There has been hearing after hearing on The Hill in many committees where the CEO’s of big tech are called on their abuses and they simply defer to feeble apologies or blame algorithmic operations. As President Trump worked diligently to stop or amend Section 230….it ever happened at the congressional level…reading on, perhaps we know why…

Big Tech, Media, Fashion Exec.s Seek to Blackmail Pro-Life ...

Donations and donations and more donations.

Big tech colludes to protect Biden - Advance Australia Even Australia gets-it.

TheBlaze reports: The Biden Inaugural Committee released its list of donors, which included big tech companies Google, Microsoft, and Qualcomm. The Biden Inaugural Committee published the list of its top donors on Saturday, all of whom contributed “over $200 to the 59th Presidential Inaugural activities.”

Besides the big tech giants, other notable benefactors include multinational telecommunications conglomerate Verizon, cable television behemoth Comcast, mass media company Charter Communications, defense and aerospace manufacturer Boeing, health insurance provider Anthem, and medical technology company Masimo Corporation.

Several unions made donations, including the American Federation of Teachers COPE, United Food And Commercial Workers, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

The amount of the donations are not provided, but the committee will have to disclose that information within 90 days after Inauguration Day, according to FEC guidance.

“President-elect Joe Biden’s newly formed inaugural committee will accept donations from individuals up to $500,000 and from corporations up to $1 million,” CNBC reported on Nov. 30.

An organization can be named a chair of the inaugural if it gives $1 million, and an individual can be designated as a chair if they donate $500,000. The VIP chair package includes “an invitation to virtual events with the President-elect and Vice President-elect and their spouses with virtual signed photos, along with ‘preferred viewing’ for the inauguration, among other things,” according to Fox News.

A since-deleted “donor” page on the Biden inauguration website had stated the committee “does not accept contributions from fossil fuel companies (i.e., companies whose primary business is the extraction, processing, distribution or sale of oil, gas or coal), their executives, or from PACs organized by them.”

Biden’s campaign had also banned donations from lobbyists and the oil and gas industry. Employees of fossil fuel companies were allowed to donate up to $200.

Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20 is expected to be significantly smaller in scale because of the coronavirus pandemic. Biden’s inauguration will have a “virtual parade across America,” and feature “diverse, dynamic” performances.

“The parade will celebrate America’s heroes, highlight Americans from all walks of life in different states and regions, and reflect on the diversity, heritage, and resilience of the country as we begin a new American era,” the inaugural committee said in a press release.

“We are excited about the possibilities and opportunities this moment presents to allow all Americans to participate in our country’s sacred inaugural traditions,” said Presidential Inaugural Committee executive director Maju Varghese.

President Donald Trump has proclaimed that he will not attend Biden’s inauguration.