Category Archives: DOJ, DC and inside the Beltway

A Look Back at the Last Decade

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Sadly, so much of the domestic and world events have affected our daily lives while other events have carried into this new decade. This is hardly a complete look back and readers are encouraged to leave comments with additional major events of the last decade. Congratulations for surviving and prevailing the last decade.

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2010: The Arab Spring

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Apple introduces first iPad

President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law

7.0 Earthquake strike Haiti

Instagram Debuts

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2011:  Abbottabad Raid Killing Osama bin Ladin

8.9 Earthquake Hits Japan

Prince William Marries Catherine Middleton

Casey Anthony Acquitted of Killing her Daughter

Syrian Civil War Began

2012: Baumgartner’s Stratosphere Jump

Benghazi attack

Super Hurricane Sandy

Aurora, Colorado Theater Shooting

Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting

2013: IRS Targeting

Boston Marathon Bombing

Edward Snowden NSA leaks

Pope Benedict Resignation, First Ever

Black Lives Matter Activist Movement Originates

Failed Government Launch of Healthcare.gov

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2014: Malaysia Flight #370 Goes Missing

Actor Robin Williams Dies by Suicide

Bowe Bergdahl Taliban Prisoner Swap

Ebola Virus Outbreak

Boko Harem Kidnaps 200 Schoolgirls

Uber Launches Rideshare

Obama Normalizes Relations with Cuba

Islamic State (ISIL-ISIS) Battle Begins in Mosul

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2015:  San Bernardino Terror Attack

Pope Francis Speech to Joint Session of Congress

Hillary Clinton Email Scandal

Charlie Hebdo Terror Attack

Paris Stade de France Bombing

Bataclan Terror Attack

Syrian European Refugee Crisis

2016: Rio Olympic Games, Ryan Lochte scandal

U.S. Supreme Court Legalizes Gay Marriage

Singer Prince Found Dead from Fentanyl Overdose

Colin Kaepernick Began Kneeling Protest

Brexit Vote for Withdraw of United Kingdom from European Union

Russia Hacks U.S. Obama Expels Russian Diplomats and Spies

2017: Rare Coast to Coast Full Solar Eclipse

#MeToo Movement Begins

Las Vegas Mandalay Bay Hotel Shooting Killing 58 Wounding 413

Arianna Grande Manchester Bombing

Robert Mueller Named Special Council to Investigate Donald Trump and Russian Collusion

Hurricane Harvey, Category 4 Hits Leaving $125 Billion in Damage

Hurricane Irma, Category 5

Hurricane Maria, Category 5

President Trump Launches #FakeNews

ANTIFA Launches National Activist Operations

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2018: Thailand Soccer Team Rescued from Cave

North Korea Agrees to Trump to Denuclearize

Cambridge Analytica-Facebook Scandal

Christine Blasey Ford v. Brett Kavanugh (Supreme Court Nominee)

Prince Harry Marries American Meghan Markle

Stoneman Douglas High School Shooting, Killing 17

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2019:  Robert Mueller Special Council Investigation Ends

U.S. House of Representatives Votes on Two Articles of Impeachment of President Trump

Trump Installs Sweeping Immigration Enforcement Measures

U.S. China Trade Pact Finalizes First Agreement

Boeing Jets Grounded

Hong Kong Freedom Fighters Protest China for Freedom

Locked Shields Versus Iran

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Since the death of several Iranian warlords including Qassim Soleimani, the United States has dispatched more military personnel to the Middle East. The Patriot missile batteries scattered in the region including in Bahrain are now at the ready. When it comes to cyber operations inside Iran, little is being discussed as a means of retribution against the United States. Iran does have cyber warfare capabilities and does use them.

It has been mentioned in recent days that President Trump has been quite measured in responding to Iran’s various attacks including striking Saudi oil fields, hitting oil tankers and shooting down one of the drones operated by the United States. In fact, the United States did respond directly after the downing of our drone by inserting an effective cyber-attack against Iran’s weapons systems by targeting the controls of the missile systems.

APT33 phishing Read details from Security Affairs.

Iran has an estimated 100,000 volunteer cyber trained operatives that has been expanding for the last ten years led by the Basij, a paramilitary network. The cyber unit known for controlling the Iranian missile launchers is Sepehr 110 is a large target of the United States and Israel. Iran also mobilizes cyber criminals and proxy networks including another one known as OilRig.

In 2018, the United States charged 9 Iranians (Mabna Hackers) for conducting massive cyber theft, wire fraud and identity theft that affected hundreds of universities, companies and other proprietary entities.

Due to a more global cyber threat by Iran known to collaborate with North Korea, China and Russia, NATO has been quite aggressive in cyber defense operations via the Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence applying the Locked Shields Program.

Not too be lost in the cyber threat conditions, Iran also uses their cyber team to blast out propaganda using social media platforms. If this sounds quite familiar, it is. The Russian propaganda operations manual is also being used by Iran. The bots and trolls are at work in Europe to keep France, Britain and Germany connected to the Iranian nuclear deal and to maintain trade operations with Iran including diplomatic operations. There are fake Iranian and Russian accounts still today all over Twitter and Facebook for which Europe is slow to respond if at all.

Meet APT33, which the West calls the Iranian hacking crew(s), the other slang name is Elfin. APT33 is not only hacking, but it is performing cyber-espionage as well. There are many outside government organizations researching and decoding Iran’s cyber operations that cooperate with inside U.S. government cyber operations located across the globe that also cooperate with NATO.

Recorded Future is one such non-government pro-active cyber operation working on Iran. These include attributions of cyber attacks by Iran against Saudi Arabia as well as the West by decoding phishing campaigns, relationships, malware and webshells and security breeches.

Recent published results include in part:

Nasr Institute and Kavosh Redux

In our previous report, “Iran’s Hacker Hierarchy Exposed,” we concluded that the exposure of one APT33 contractor, the Nasr Institute, by FireEye in 2017, along with our intelligence on the composition and motivations of the Iranian hacker community, pointed to a tiered structure within Iran’s state-sponsored offensive cyber program. We assessed that many Iranian state-sponsored operations were directed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).

According to a sensitive Insikt Group source who provided information for previous research, these organizations employed a mid-level tier of ideologically aligned task managers responsible for the compartmentalized tasking of over 50 contracting organizations, who conducted activities such as vulnerability research, exploit development, reconnaissance, and the conducting of network intrusions or attacks. Each of these discrete components, in developing an offensive cyber capability, were purposefully assigned to different contracting groups to protect the integrity of overarching operations and to ensure the IRGC and/or MOIS retained control of operations and mitigated the risk from rogue hackers. Read more here in detail from a published summary of 6 months ago.

Great News on the Feres Doctrine

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The Supreme Court again on Monday opted not to hear a challenge to the legal precedent barring individuals from suing the military for medical malpractice, a decision blasted by Justice Clarence Thomas as short-sighted and unfair.

“Unfortunate repercussions — denial of relief to military personnel and distortions of other areas of law to compensate — will continue to ripple through our jurisprudence as long as the Court refuses to reconsider (this issue),” Thomas wrote in his dissent to the court’s decision not to take up the challenge.

The move once again shifts from the courts to Congress debate on how to fix problems surrounding the Feres Doctrine, a 1950 Supreme Court decision that blocks troops from claiming medical malpractice damages for actions related to their military service. At the time, the court found that military personnel injured by the negligence of another federal employee cannot sue under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

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Tuesday is a historic day in Washington D.C. It’s a day that a Fort Bragg soldier fought for as he battled terminal cancer, a diagnosis he says military doctors missed.

Stayskal along with his wife, Megan witnessed the Senate approve the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA is the defense spending bill that includes a provision Stayskal fought for which will, for the first time, give active duty service members the right to be compensated for malpractice in military facilities in cases that are unrelated to combat.

So, what is the good news? The Senate.

In full disclosure, several months ago, I interviewed for radio Sgt. 1st Class Richard Stayskal and his lawyer. One of the hardest interviews I have ever hosted with a dedicated soldier dying of cancer.

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Fourteen months after the North Carolina Purple Heart Green Beret first shared his story with FOX 46 – how doctors at Womack Army Medical Center misdiagnosed his lung cancer as pneumonia in 2017, delaying treatment that could have prolonged his life – his story is getting results and now changing federal law.

“It’s just an amazing feeling overall right now. I don’t have the words to describe it,” said Stayskal, who has stage 4 lung cancer, and came back to Washington to watch the historic vote inside the Senate chamber. “It’s a victory for everybody. For all the service members across the board.”

On social media, Stayskal and his attorney, Natalie Khawam, wrote: “We did the impossible!”

Back to the Senate and the NDAA:

The Senate overwhelmingly passed the National Defense Authorization Act by a vote of 86-8 on Tuesday. Tucked inside is a provision, sparked by Stayskal, that will allow service members who have been victims of negligent medical care to finally be allowed to hold the government accountable. The measure allocates $400 million to the Dept. of Defense to investigate and pay out military medical malpractice claims internally. It will provide a measure of justice to service members and their families that has previously been denied.

“Everyone involved in this conference, including the Department of Defense,” said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), “recognized the importance of fixing the medical malpractice issue in a common sense fashion.” The NDAA now goes to President Donald Trump to sign into law, which is expected to happen in the coming days. More here.

Did we Forget Freedom Fighters Around the World?

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The country is still in collapse and Maduro remains in power. Question is why? Beyond Venezuela, there is Bolivia, Chile, Columbia and even Ecuador where tyranny and socialism is being protested.

Image result for protests in latin america photo Miami Herald

Image result for protests in iran photo The Atlantic
A quick review for Latin America is looking much like the freedom fighters in Hong Kong, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

* Two months after Chile lurched from an illusory calm to a fiery outburst of rage, there is still no sign that life is about to return to normal. After an agreement last month between political parties, the country will next year hold a referendum on drafting a new constitution – one of the protesters’ main demands.

But widespread anger still simmers over inequality, social exclusion and the high cost of education and healthcare. Demonstrators continue to gather across the country every day, and violence often erupts at nightfall.

Chileans have found themselves in a state of uncertainty – suspended between hopes of progress, and frustration over a political solution which seems beyond reach.

* In Columbia: The number of FARC dissidents now stands at around 3,000 combatants, already accounting for more than 20 percent of the 13,000 FARC members who demobilized. This number continues to grow and is likely to keep growing in the short and medium-term. While there are no indications that the ex-FARC mafia will ever reach the numbers of the FARC prior to demobilization, it is clear that the dissident elements are a threat to national security and could become more than just a localized threat within Colombia.

Faith in the FARC Peace Process – This is low, among the Colombian public, among former rebel combatants, and even within the government itself. Unless significant action is taken to reassure those rebels that remain in the peace process, the risk of further desertion is high. Add to this the killing of former FARC members, including some likely carried out by security forces, and the precariousness of the peace accord becomes clear.

Criminal Economies – The criminal economies that sustained the FARC for more than five decades are more lucrative than ever, with Colombia producing record amounts of cocaine. However, the ex-FARC mafia rely on more than cocaine. Marijuana, especially in the violence-ridden department of Cauca is a big earner, while the profits from poppy and the heroin it produces are also considerable. More here.

*After 12 days of nationwide unrest, several Indigenous peoples of Ecuador joined by social organizations succeeded in forcing the government of Lenin Moreno into scrapping a presidential decree eliminating fuel subsidies in the oil-producing nation.

The uprising saw thousands of indigenous people marching towards the capital Quito from different corners of the country. They occupied the city and received unprecedented solidarity from local volunteers and progressive universities, while protesters vigorously clashed with security forces for days around the presidential palace and National Assembly.

“You can call it a war zone. It is ugly, ugly, ugly,” said Margarita, a member of the rescue brigade of the Eugenio Espejo hospital in the Ecuadorian capital Quito, attempting to catch her breath. She had just returned to a health care post a few hundred meters away from the frontlines of the clashes between security forces and anti-government protesters.

President Trump has a huge opportunity to lead the world on the importance of freedom, liberty, capitalism, peace and economies. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is doing a great job yet the tasks are larger than one person and the Congressional Democrats  and 2020 candidates should be shamed for selling socialism.

Don’t Investigate Bidens Now, then When?

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As the U.S. presidential race began roaring to life in 2016, authorities in the former Soviet republic of Latvia flagged a series of “ suspicious” financial transactions to Hunter Biden and other colleagues at a Ukrainian natural gas company and sought Kiev’s help investigating, according to documents and interviews.

The Feb. 18, 2016 alert to Ukraine came from the Latvian prosecutorial agency responsible for investigating money laundering, and it specifically questioned whether Vice President Joe Biden’s younger son and three other officials at Burisma Holdings were the potential beneficiaries of suspect funds.

“The Office for Prevention of Laundering of Proceeds Derived from Criminal Activity … is currently investigating suspicious activity of Burisma Holdings Limited,” the Latvian agency also known as the FIU wrote Ukraine’s financial authorities.

The memo was released to me by the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s Office and confirmed by the Latvian embassy to the United States.

Latvian authorities said they did not get any incriminating information back from Ukraine to warrant further investigation and did not take additional action in 2016. But the memo adds to the mounting evidence that there was ongoing investigative activity surrounding Burisma Holdings and Hunter Biden’s compensation as a board member in the weeks just before Joe Biden forced the firing of the Ukraine prosecutor overseeing the Burisma investigation in spring 2016.

The Latvian law enforcement memo identified a series of loan payments totaling about $16.6 million that were routed from companies in Beliz and the United Kingdom to Burisma through Ukraine’s PrivatBank between 2012 and 2015.

The flagged funds were “partially transferred” to Hunter Biden, a board member at Burisma since May 2014, and three other officials working for the Ukrainian natural gas company, the Latvian memo said. More here from Solomon.

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But hold on as the media knew much of this as did so many members of Congress and quite frankly our intelligence agencies including the U.S. Department of State.

Politico reported just recently: The Bidens took over Paradigm Global Advisors. In the late summer of 2006 Joe Biden’s son Hunter and Joe’s younger brother, James, purchased the firm. On their first day on the job, they showed up with Joe’s other son, Beau, and two large men and ordered the hedge fund’s chief of compliance to fire its president, according to a Paradigm executive who was present. At the time, the senator was just months away from both assuming the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and launching his second presidential bid.

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According to the executive, James Biden made it clear he viewed the fund as a way to take money from rich foreigners who could not legally give money to his older brother or his campaign account. “We’ve got investors lined up in a line of 747s filled with cash ready to invest in this company,” the executive remembers James Biden saying.

 

PCM Merger Agreement by Anonymous Q1yQNGqtP on Scribd

The Biden family have consistently mixed business and politics over nearly half a century, moving from one business to the next as Joe’s stature in Washington grew. None of the ventures appear to have been runaway successes, and Biden’s relatives have not been accused of criminal wrongdoing in their dealings. But over the years, several of their partners and associates have ended up indicted or convicted. The dealings have brought Joe unwelcome scrutiny and threaten to distract from his presidential bid. Read the long and full story here.

But hold there is still more beyond Burisma and China. That is we need to go back even further.

A son of Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden was paid an undisclosed amount of money as a consultant by MBNA, the largest employer in Delaware, during the years the senator supported legislation that was promoted by the credit card industry and opposed by consumer groups.

Barack Obama’s presidential campaign said Biden helped forge a bipartisan compromise on the measure, which is now law and makes it harder for consumers to obtain bankruptcy protection in the courts.

MBNA’s consulting payments to Hunter Biden, first reported by The New York Times, followed his departure in 2001 from the company, where he had been an executive.

At the time Hunter Biden was receiving consulting payments from MBNA, he also was a Washington lobbyist at a firm he had co-founded.

“He was not a lobbyist for MBNA, and his work had absolutely nothing to do with the bankruptcy bill. Zero. Nothing,” said Wade.

Resurrecting Biden’s role in the bankruptcy legislation could undercut one of the Obama campaign’s lines of attack: That his Republican opponent, John McCain, is insensitive to the financial woes of middle-class Americans.

Consumer and civil rights groups and unions, as well as Democratic opponents, had argued that the bankruptcy legislation was unfair to low-income working people, single mothers, minorities and the elderly, and would remove a safety net for those who have lost their jobs or face mounting medical bills. More here.

But are there other politicians we need to look at? Yes.

Robert Powell, the husband of Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, D-Fla., reportedly took $700,000 from a Ukrainian oligarch named Igor Kolomoisky. Mucarsel-Powell sits on the House Judiciary Committee, the committee that drafted two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump for his alleged abuse of power with regards to Ukraine.

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In 2018, the Daily Beast reported that a number of businesses linked to Kolomoisky hired Powell as an attorney. One of those firms paid Powell at least $700,000 over two years, according to public records.

The Miami Herald reported Powell was working for companies tied to Kolomoisky for 10 years. Powell made most of his money in the two years leading up to his wife’s election in 2018.

Kolomoisky has been accused of contract killings and embezzlement in the past. Yet, in 2018 when Mucarsel-Powell was running for her seat, she did not see her husband’s work as relevant to her campaign. More here.

As President Trump works diligently to be the law and order president, it is no wonder AG Barr, John Dunham, Rudy Guiliani and so many others including conservative media are doing the real investigative work…draining the swamp.

So, while we have elections around the corner, we have much more to learn and consider at the ballot box. Could it be that the Democrats led by Speaker Pelosi are scrambling to cover up some other nasty events we are slowly learning about?