Category Archives: Trump Administration

Two Formal Challenges to Pelosi’s Impeachment Inquiry Mission

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You read it here, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is creating an off ramp to the early launch of the impeachment inquiry of President Trump. In previous months, Gerald Nadler, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee has been on a quest to impeach listing all kinds of reasons to do so. Nothing was really sticking as far as Pelosi was concerned. But then came this phone call President Trump had with Ukraine that gave us a whistleblower and before all the facts and the complaint was released, Pelosi lit the impeach inquiry candle. Turns out all along, she knew about the call details and the whistleblower all due to Congressman Adam Schiff office secret work with authoring the whistleblower complaint in the first place. Deep state is getting deeper….
Meanwhile…..

Image result for congressman kevin mccarthy
Enter House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. He sent a letter to Pelosi challenging telling her to halt the whole inquiry thing because she is clearly not following rules, procedures and protocol. (I think she is doing that on purpose, read ‘off ramp)
In the McCarthy letter to Pelosi he demands answers to the following questions, which prove so far that Pelosi is not following procedures.

Those questions were as follows:

Do you intend to hold a vote of the full House authorizing our impeachment inquiry?
Do you intend to involve the full House in each critical step of this inquiry, including defining its scope and establishing its rules and procedures?
Do you intend to grant co-equal subpoena power to both the Chair and Ranking Member at the committee level?
Do you intend to require that all subpoenas be subject to a vote of the full committee at the request of either the Chair or Ranking Member?
Do you intend to provide the President’s counsel the right to attend all hearings and depositions?
Do you intend to provide the president’s counsel the right to present evidence?
Do you intend to provide the president’s counsel the right to object to the admittance of evidence?
Do you intend to provide the president’s counsel the right to cross-examine witnesses?
Do you intend to provide the president’s counsel the right to recommend a witness list?
Do you intend to refer all findings on impeachment to Chairman Nadler and the Judiciary Committee, as prescribed by Rule X of the Rules of the House, or is Chairman Schiff in charge of leading the inquiry as reported in the press?

“By answering ‘no’ to any of the above, you would be acting in direct contradiction to all modern impeachment inquiries of a sitting president,” McCarthy wrote.

Okay, hold on because here comes Congressman Doug Collins.

Image result for congressman doug collins

Collins is the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, is telling a federal judge that the Democrats’ impeachment investigation has no legal basis per his amicus brief.

The amicus brief: doug.collins.amicus

(in part)

That part of the text of the amicus brief echos that of Minority Leader’s letter to Pelosi.

All the while, the whole Ukraine phone call thing the House Democrats are using to pull the trigger on impeachment inquiries is also falling apart. The whole Biden scandal continues to fester.

Stay tuned…

The Ukraine Thing will Soon Lead to Cyprus, Meanwhile

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It is a must to fully comprehend how far and wide the choreography was on the Russian collusion thing. Still much of that is unresolved, hence the reason for AG Barr spending a good deal of time in Europe, while John Durham is working his side of the case.
Then there was the massive anti-Kavanaugh Supreme Court thing such that two books were published describing that epic yet failed campaign with hundreds of players inside and outside of government.
Now we have Ukraine percolating while other embers are burning larger that include many of the usual players and others not so well known. This will eventually lead to Cyprus which is a well know hub for money laundering and shell companies.

The players and choreography here as well is a nasty monster.

Meanwhile…
Meet Karen Greenaway.

Recovery of assets stolen by Yanukovych regime: FBI admit they could not return even single ... She lived in Russia before becoming an FBI agent.

Lil miss Karen was a long-timer at the FBI as a case agent and supervisor managing and investigating crimes of money-laundering, financial crimes and international corruption. For context, she worked on Transnational Organized Crime in the former Soviet Union, Middle East, Africa and Asia. She speaks fluent Russian.
Having now left the FBI, she has been still quite busy. In 2018, she was a keynote speaker on those topics at a conference in Copenhagen. She was also included in the panel at the IACC in Seoul in 2020. Here she even mentions a ‘trail of blood that lead to the knife for the murder investigation’. Humm okay.

She must have impressed in her work at the FBI, as later she was also a top investigator on all things Paul Manafort. It is important to go back to 2013 when Viktor Yanukovych, the former president of Ukraine fled to Russia. It is thought he and his team, some that also successfully fled, while others did not pilfered billions in corruption schemes. Ms. Greenaway, at the FBI during that time, has the goods, but to what end is uncertain.

As John Soloman of The Hill published due to his stellar work, the Obama administration sent an envoy to Ukraine with an interesting list of people and companies that were not to be investigated, one of them being Burisma. But there is yet another operation that is much more influential and important and that is AntAC. Karen was investigating the Firtash case in Austria back in 2016 as she explained at a AntAC conference in December of 2016.

Now it gets even more interesting. Seems AntAC did not appreciate Solomon’s reporting. Oh, it must be noted that AntAC is a George Soros operation well know by the Obama White House and Victoria Nuland from the State Department.

Just this past February, there was an interesting briefing in the Dirksen Senate Office building dealing with ‘asset recovery’ in Eurasia. Karen Greenaway was there too. A large part of the matter was not only Ukraine but monies in the realm of an estimate trillion dollars, some of which belong to the U.S. government (read, taxpayer).

Greenaway recently retired, and Soros’s AntAC soon after announced she was joining its supervisory board.

It is all complicated and it really is complicated if you read the summary below. But….this was all going on during the Obama administration with John Kerry as Secretary of State.

This is long, but a must read:

The opinion article, which was published on March 26 on The Hill media platform, contained a number of allegations regarding AntAC. We would like to offer our fact check and explanations.

Quote from the opinion article: “While the 2016 presidential race was raging in America, Ukrainian prosecutors ran into some unexpectedly strong headwinds as they pursued an investigation into the activities of a nonprofit in their homeland known as the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC).

The focus on AntAC was part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into whether $4.4 million in U.S. funds to fight corruption inside the former Soviet republic had been improperly diverted.

The prosecutors soon would learn the resistance they faced was blowing directly from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, where the Obama administration took the rare step of trying to press the Ukrainian government to back off its investigation of both the U.S. aid and the group.”

The criminal case into alleged embezzlement of U.S. technical assistance of 4 million USD  of the US taxpayers money which had to be spent on the PGO’s reforms was opened on March 16, 2016 by the Prosecutor General’s Office under the leadership of the previous Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

On April 4, 2016 the PGO received the letter from the U.S. Embassy.

Yuriy Lutsenko, who was appointed to the position of the Prosecutor General in May 2016, fully agreed that the allegations were groundless, he even said that they ‘simply dishonor the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine’.

As soon as Lutsenko was appointed, the case was closed in May 2016 by the PGO.

“Yuri Lutsenko, widely regarded as a hero in the West for spending two years in prison after fighting Russian aggression in his country, was named prosecutor general and invited to meet new U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.”

Firstly, Yuri Lutsenko is widely regarded in the West as “hero” for his drunken and disorderly conduct in Frankfurt airport, where he was detained by the police in 2009 while serving as a Minister of Interior Affairs of Ukraine.

Secondly, Yuri Lutsenko was sentenced to four years in prison in early 2012, this was two years before Russian aggression that started in 2014. Allegations against Lutsenko were for embezzlement of funds of the Ministry of Interior under his leadership and abuse of office resulting in illicit allocation of state-owned apartment to his former driver, facilitating illicit social security payments to this person and illicit allocation of funds for the celebration of the Militia (police) day in 2008-2009. He was charged with causing damages of $125,000 to the state. Lutsenko submitted a claim to the European Court of Human Rights and in 2012 the court ruled that Lutsenko’s arrest and subsequent detention violated the European Convention on Human Rights.

“Lutsenko told me he was stunned when the ambassador “gave me a list of people whom we should not prosecute.” The list included a founder of the AntAC group and two members of Parliament who vocally supported the group’s anti-corruption reform agenda, according to a source directly familiar with the meeting.”

During the first possible meeting of Madam Ambassador with Lutsenko, which could not have happened earlier than late August 2016, there were no ongoing criminal prosecutions against AntAC Head of Board Vitaliy Shabunin.

The criminal case against AntAC on alleged embezzlement of the U.S. taxpayers money was already closed for around 3 months.

The criminal investigation into Shabunin’s punch of a bully-provocateur, which took place on June 8, 2017, was triggered in summer 2017. There is an ongoing trial in this case in the court.

“It turns out the group that Ukrainian law enforcement was probing was co-funded by the Obama administration and liberal mega-donor George Soros.”

AntAC was founded in the end of 2011 by Vitaliy Shabunin and Daria Kaleniuk, who formerly were activists of youth NGO “Foundation of Regional Initiatives”. In 2012 AntAC was functioning without any financial support as a volunteer project of its founders.

In 2013 the NGO received first funding as a subgrant from the All-Ukrainian Network of People Living with HIV/AIDs supported by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for the public monitoring of public procurement of medications in Ukraine.

“In the end, no action was taken against AntAC and it remains thriving today.”

This is not true. The action was taken in May 2016 – the PGO closed the criminal case “due to the absence of criminal offence.” However, no-one from PGO officers who abused the power triggering criminal investigation on AntAC was punished disregarding organization’s requests. Information PGO obtained through the course of the investigation (banking statements) was later repeatedly leaked to media with the goal to discredit the organization.

“After the Obama Justice Department launched its Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative a decade ago to prosecute corruption in other countries, the State Department, Justice Department and FBI outsourced some of its work in Ukraine to groups funded by Soros.”

In December 2013 in the middle of the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine AntAC launched a campaign on freezing foreign assets of Ukraine’s former President Yanukovych and his associates. AntAC was running a webpage yanukovich.info, which gathered all publicly available facts about corrupt assets of Yanukovych’s allies and mapped the role of Western lawyers, banks and companies in covering and enabling grand corruption. The campaign was funded via crowdfunding from concerned citizens and was not financially supported by neither government of the U.S. nor Soros foundation.

Within the campaign AntAC reached out to the law enforcement agencies in the EU, Switzerland, the U.S. with request to investigate foreign assets of Yanukovych and his associates. DoJ Kleptocracy Asset Recovery initiative was part of a long list of foreign law enforcement agencies AntAC reached out in December 2013 – February 2014.

“One key U.S. partner was AntAC, which received 59 percent (or $1 million) of its nearly $1.7 million budget since 2012 from U.S. budgets tied to State and Justice, and nearly $290,000 from Soros’s International Renaissance Foundation, according to the group’s donor disclosure records.”

Apart from the projects, funded by abovementioned donors U.S. government and Open Society foundations, since 2013 AntAC was funded by a wide range of other donors, including:

  • The Global Fund via All-Ukraine Charitable Organization “All-Ukraininan Network of People living with HIV/AIDS”
  • The Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands via Matra program
  • The Embassy of the United Kingdom
  • The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic
  • European Union
  • Donations from individuals/legal entities

“The U.S.-Soros collaboration was visible in Kiev. Several senior Department of Justice (DOJ) officials and FBI agents appeared in pictures as participants or attendees at Soros-sponsored events and conferences.”

Right after the victory of the Revolution of Dignity and runaway of former President Yanukovych from Ukraine, AntAC activists were invited to the meetings with law enforcement officers from various countries willing to help Ukraine in tracing proceeds of corruption of ousted president Yanukovych. AntAC also met with representatives from DOJ and shared with them all publicly available information the organization gathered on corrupt officials under Yanukovych regime.

Recovery of proceeds of corruption of Yanukovych and his associates was one of the key priorities of work of AntAC, which was organizing specialized asset recovery conference in Ukraine in 2014, 2015, 2016. Law enforcement officers from Ukraine and abroad were invited to these conferences, including Karen Greenaway. Apart from DOJ officials  there were Ukrainian (including PGO), Italian, British, Swiss law enforcement officers speaking and participating at AntAC asset recovery conferences.

“Greenaway recently retired, and Soros’s AntAC soon after announced she was joining its supervisory board.”

In February 2019 Karen Greenaway agreed to join AntAC Supervisory Board after she will finish her other professional obligations.

AntAC Supervisory Board membership is a non-paid commitment from distinguished professionals who care about Ukraine and countering grand political corruption. Among AntAC Supervisory Board members there are Francis Fukuyama from Stanford University, Giovanni Kessler, former head of the EU Anti-Fraud Office, Oliver Bullough, British author and investigative journalists, Oleksa Shalayskyi, head of Nashi Groshi investigative project in Ukraine.

“Senior U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed to me that the early kleptocracy collaborations inside Ukraine led to highly visible U.S. actions against the oligarch Dmitri Firtash, a major target of the Soros group, and Manafort. Firtash is now represented by former Hillary Clinton lawyer Lanny Davis and former U.S. Attorney Dan Webb.”

Dmitri Firtash was never a major target of the Anti-corruption Action Centre.

AntAC collects publicly available evidence of alleged corruption and money laundering of all oligarchs in Ukraine, as well as all top corrupt officials. AntAC has been doing this under the regime of ousted president Yanukovych and continues to do that under the new government leaded by President Poroshenko since spring 2014.

“Ukrainian NGO Anticorruption Action Centre (AntAC) petitioned the United States Justice Department on behalf of Ukrainian civil society to dedicate the nearly $3 million in forfeited and seized assets allegedly laundered by former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, to creating an anti-corruption training facility,” a 2015 foundation document stated.

In 2013 AntAC submitted a petition to the DoJ with request to repatriate $250mln proceeds of corruption of Pavlo Lazarenko, a former Prime Minister of Ukraine, convicted in the US for money laundering back in 2006. Since 2004, the U.S. government started in rem forfeiture procedure aiming at recovery of proceeds of crime. The procedure is still pending.

In the petition supported by more than 10 civil society organizations AntAC called the US government to refrain from repatriation of stolen assets back to the corrupt government of Ukraine at that time headed by Yanukovych, which could steal them again. AntAC called the US Government to consider the success story of repatriating proceeds of corruption to Kazakhstan, where  independent BOTA foundation was set up for the repatriation of proceeds of corruption. In 2015, AntAC updated the petition given the abrupt changes in the country and emerged news in media claiming that Lazarenko’s funds were about to be confiscated by the DoJ.

“Spokespersons for AntAC and Open Society Foundations did not respond to repeated requests for comment.”

AntAC did not receive any requests for the comments by John Solomon following recent Lutsenko’s interview. The only request from him to provide answers to the questions was received back in October 2018 (six months before publication of Lutsenko’s interview). At that time, AntAC did not provide any response to Solomon after the background checks on him. AntAC became aware of John Solomon’s controversial reputation in American media for spreading manipulative and biased messages. For instance, last year, the staffers of the Hill expressed their concerns over Solomon’s biased reporting. AntAC was rightfully concerned that our answers would be misused and manipulated by Solomon.

 

 

 

Trump Admin to Release Saudi Names Aiding 9/11 Hijackers

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Primer: File 17,

Al-Thumairy, an imam at the King Fahad Mosque in Culver City, California accredited with the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, is suspected of helping two of the hijackers after they arrived in the city.

The commission also states that Al-Thumairy and Al-Bayoumi knew each other and had regular phone conversations.

Al-Bayoumi, a Saudi national, is also reported to have provided hijackers Nawaf Al-Hazmi and Khalid Al-Mihdhar with considerable assistance after they arrived in San Diego in February 2000.

“Al-Bayoumi has extensive ties to the Saudi government and many in the local Muslim community in San Diego believed that he was a Saudi intelligence officer,” the report stated. Al-Bayoumi left the US weeks before the 9/11 attacks.

SARASOTA CONNECTION: 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi hung out at home in Prestancia gated community Sarasota Fl prior to the Sept. 11th terror attack. Sarasota Budget Mobile store owner Wissam Hammoud told investigators that he often exercised with Abdulaziz al-Hijji at the Shapes Fitness center near the Prestancia neighborhood, and that the two played soccer together on property surrounding the Sarasota Bradenton Islamic Center Mosque at 4350 N. Lockwood Ridge Rd Sarasota Fl prior to Sept. 11th, 2001. Abdulaziz al-Hijji was devoted to Osama bin Laden. Al-Qaeda and Hamas linked Imam Muneer Arafat was hired by the Sarasota Bradenton Islamic Center in March of 2000, he listed local address’s on Central Sarasota Pkwy and at Nature Circle Sarasota, FL.

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration has agreed to provide a key piece of new information about alleged official Saudi involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks after an intense lobbying effort by victims’ families.

Victims’ families have for months urged the government to make information public, telling President Trump in a letter recently that it would help them “finally learn the full truth and obtain justice from Saudi Arabia.” The FBI, citing the “exceptional nature of the case,” said it would provide the name of one Saudi official the families’ had most wanted, but wouldn’t release any other information they sought.

The families sought information as part of a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia that accuses its government of helping coordinate the 2001 attacks. The U.S. government’s decision comes amid broader tensions between Washington and Riyadh, through which Mr. Trump has largely stood by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed when terrorists crashed hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and, after passengers resisted, a field in Pennsylvania.

Most of the attackers were from Saudi Arabia; Riyadh has denied complicity in the attacks.

The families had sought an unredacted copy of a four-page 2012 summary of an FBI inquiry into three people who may have assisted two of the hijackers in California in finding housing, obtaining driver’s licenses and other matters.

In Blow to Kingdom, Judge Rejects Saudi Effort to Escape 9 ... Omar al-Bayoumi More Documents Surface Revealing Saudi 9/11 Role, U.S ...  Fahad al-Thumairy

Two of the people, Fahad al-Thumairy and Omar al-Bayoumi, were linked to the Saudi government, according to FBI and congressional documents.  The third person, whose name is redacted, is described in the summary as having tasked the other two with assisting the hijackers.

Last year, lawyers for the families subpoenaed the FBI for an unredacted copy of the document in the belief that the third person was potentially a senior Saudi official who exercised authority over both of the men.

Mr. Trump’s allies had also urged him to release the information. Days after the Oct. 2, 2018, assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.), a close ally of the president, met in Washington with Prince Khalid bin Salman, younger brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, calling on him to produce documents in the court case and “make right the loss of the 9/11 families,” Mr. Gaetz said.

“I explained to the prince that transparency and justice for the 9/11 families would be the best way to reset the U.S.-Saudi relationship following Khashoggi’s death,” he recalled in an interview.

At the time, the prince, known as KBS, was serving as Saudi ambassador to the U.S., but he was recalled to the kingdom amid outrage over the murder. The CIA said in a secret assessment last year that it had medium-to-high confidence that Prince Mohammed ordered Mr. Khashoggi’s death.

That has put Mr. Trump in a bind given his desire to maintain ties with the Saudi government, which he has said is an important ally and supports the U.S. defense industry with billions in arms purchases.

Mr. Trump has tried to stem a tide of bipartisan outrage on Capitol Hill at Saudi Arabia. Lawmakers are angry at widespread civilian casualties caused by a Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen, Riyadh’s detention of female activists and other issues. Mr. Trump in July vetoed a series of Congressional measures intended to block U.S. arms sales to the kingdom.

The first anniversary of Mr. Khashoggi’s murder in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, on Oct. 2, is likely to reignite focus on the issue and on U.S.-Saudi ties.

To bolster their case, the 9/11 families enlisted Ballard Partners, a Washington lobbying firm with strong ties to Mr. Trump. Saudi Arabia’s official involvement in the planning of the 9/11 attacks is the subject of some dispute. The 9/11 Commission said in its 2004 report it didn’t find evidence that Mr. al-Thumairy had provided assistance to the two operatives.

It also said it had seen “no credible evidence” that Mr. al-Bayoumi “believed in violent extremism or knowingly aided extremist groups.”

In 2015, the commission revisited the issue and assessed more recent evidence regarding Messrs. al-Thumairy and al-Bayoumi, and said it didn’t find the new information enough to change the original findings. It said there was an “ongoing internal debate” within the FBI about the potential significance of some of the information, and encouraged FBI leadership to review the perspectives and continue the investigation accordingly.

Attorneys for the victims’ families argued that the two men had provided support to the two hijackers in a “highly coordinated, state-run-and-initiated covert operation,” and filed affidavits written by former FBI officials over the past two years supporting their position.

The alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, opened the door in July to helping victims of the attacks in their lawsuit against Saudi Arabia if the U.S. government spares him the death penalty at a Guantanamo Bay military commission.

Gen. Flynn’s Lawyer Seeks 40 Categories of Evidence

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Primer: Brady Doctrine is a law which requires the prosecution to turn over all exculpatory evidence to the defendant in a criminal case.

On Wednesday, the previously sealed Motion to Compel filed against federal prosecutors in the Michael Flynn case was made public with only minor redactions.

In her Motion to Compel, Powell catalogued 40 categories of evidence the government has refused to turn over. She seeks a court order requiring federal prosecutors to provide the withheld evidence under Brady and its progeny. Brady and its offshoots require prosecutors to disclose material exculpatory and impeachment evidence to the defense team. And, as Judge Sullivan made clear during Tuesday’s hearing, that duty exists even though Flynn had already pleaded guilty and even though he had agreed that the government would not be required to provide him with further evidence.

Powell, though, must still establish that the evidence sought is Brady material. Judge Sullivan seemed skeptical of the relevance of some of the evidence Powell mentioned and how it bore on Flynn’s guilt for the offense of conviction, namely lying to FBI agents. But Powell parried well, noting, for instance, that evidence concerning the texts exchanged between former FBI Agent Peter Strzok and DOJ lawyer Lisa Page were impeachment evidence.

In another exchange, Powell stressed that recently disclosed evidence showed the government had concluded that Flynn was not a Russian or Turkish agent, and, in fact that Flynn had briefed the government before meeting with Turkish officials. That evidence was relevant to sentencing, Powell argued, because it negates prosecutors’ claim that they had foregone a FARA violation charge against Flynn. “That’s a good point,” Judge Sullivan concurred.

Powell will have a chance in her reply brief to detail how each piece of evidence sought is either exculpatory or serves as impeachment evidence. Here there’s an interesting twist: Powell seems poised to also argue that the 40 pieces of evidence requested are exculpatory (and thus Brady material), because they will show that “the entire prosecution should be dismissed for egregious government misconduct and long-time suppression of Brady material.”

Some of the evidence Powell seeks is already presumed by many to exist, such as FISA applications pertaining to Flynn and the original 302 written shortly after FBI agents interviewed Flynn about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. But other evidence Powell identifies reveals that she has skinned all the snakes involved in SpyGate and knows exactly what went down. For instance, Powell requested “any information, including recordings or 302s, about Joseph Mifsud’s presence and involvement in engaging or reporting on Mr. Flynn and Mifsud’s presence at the Russia Today dinner in Moscow on December 17, 2015.”

Also intriguing is Powell’s request for: “All payments, notes, memos, correspondence, and instructions by and between the FBI, CIA, or DOD with Stefan Halper—going back as far as 2014—regarding Michael Flynn, Svetlana Lokhova, Mr. Richard Dearlove (of MI6), and Professor Christopher Andrew (connected with MI5) and Halper’s compensation through the DOD Office of Net Assessment as evidenced by the whistleblower complaint of Adam Lovinger, addressed in our brief.”

What is fascinating about this request is that the uninformed will see the 2014 date as evidence that Powell is on a fishing expedition, while in reality, her bid for this information shows that Powell has in three short months pieced together more tiles in the mosaic of the Russia collusion fraud than Robert Mueller did in two years. (this is an in part summary from Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist)

*** Fox News Sunday | Fox News

Meanwhile:

A couple of days ago, “We know that Mr. Mueller got a letter from Mr. Rosenstein that allowed him to target Michael Flynn Jr., and there was significant pressure to enter a guilty plea while they were hiding all the evidence that showed he had not been an agent of Russia, that there were no Logan Act violations,” Powell told Hannity.

Hannity asked Powell about the possibility that Flynn took a plea deal in order to protect his son from being prosecuted. Powell did not confirm Hannity’s scenario, but suggested it was possible.

“When you put together the fact that Mr. Mueller got the letter authorizing him to target Michael Flynn Jr., and they had seized Michael Flynn Jr.’s computers and electronic devices and those things, it’s not too hard to imagine that that might have happened,” she said.

“I don’t want to speak now to things that are not a matter of public record, but stay tuned because more and more will become apparent as we proceed through the litigation.”

Feds Prepare States for Foreign Voting Interference

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The Democrats have really lost their argument against voter ID if they are being fully candid about foreign interference. It is without question that several cities and states are victims of ransomware and Florida is especially concerned. Remember that a foreign actor, where clues point to Russia were able to gain access to voter registration databases and it stands to reason China will attempt the same.

Continually, the Democrats say that the Trump administration is virtually doing nothing to protect the election system. Read on as the Democrats know the mission and actions of the Cyber division of the Department of Homeland Security.

Image result for foreign hackers us voting systems photo
As Reuters reports:

The U.S. government plans to launch a program in roughly one month that narrowly focuses on protecting voter registration databases and systems ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

These systems, which are widely used to validate the eligibility of voters before they cast ballots, were compromised in 2016 by Russian hackers seeking to collect information. Intelligence officials are concerned that foreign hackers in 2020 not only will target the databases but attempt to manipulate, disrupt or destroy the data, according to current and former U.S. officials.

“We assess these systems as high risk,” said a senior U.S. official, because they are one of the few pieces of election technology regularly connected to the Internet.

The Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, a division of the Homeland Security Department, fears the databases could be targeted by ransomware, a type of virus that has crippled city computer networks across the United States, including recently in Texas, Baltimore and Atlanta.

“Recent history has shown that state and county governments and those who support them are targets for ransomware attacks,” said Christopher Krebs, CISA’s director. “That is why we are working alongside election officials and their private sector partners to help protect their databases and respond to possible ransomware attacks.”

A ransomware attack typically locks an infected computer system until payment, usually in the form of cryptocurrency, is sent to the hacker.

The effort to counter ransomware-style cyberattacks aimed at the election runs parallel to a larger intelligence community directive to determine the most likely vectors of digital attack in the November 2020 election, according to current and former U.S. officials.

“It is imperative that states and municipalities limit the availability of information about electoral systems or administrative processes and secure their websites and databases that could be exploited,” the FBI said in a statement, supporting the Homeland Security initiative.

CISA’s program will reach out to state election officials to prepare for such a ransomware scenario. It will provide educational material, remote computer penetration testing, and vulnerability scans as well as a list of recommendations on how to prevent and recover from ransomware.

These guidelines, however, will not offer advice on whether a state should ultimately pay or refuse to pay ransom to a hacker if one of its systems is already infected.

“Our thought is we don’t want the states to have to be in that situation,” said a Homeland Security official. “We’re focused on preventing it from happening.”

Over the last two years, cyber criminals and nation state hacking groups have used ransomware to extort victims and create chaos. In one incident in 2017, which has since been attributed to Russian hackers, a ransomware virus was used to mask a data deletion technique, rendering victim computers totally unusable.

That attack, dubbed “NotPetya,” went on to damage global corporations, including FedEx and Maersk, which had offices in Ukraine where the malware first spread.

The threat is concerning because of its potential impact on voting results, experts say.

“A pre-election undetected attack could tamper with voter lists, creating huge confusion and delays, disenfranchisement, and at large enough scale could compromise the validity of the election,” said John Sebes, chief technology officer of the ESET Institute, an election technology policy think tank.

The databases are also “particularly susceptible to this kind of attack because local jurisdictions and states actively add, remove, and change the data year-round,” said Maurice Turner, a senior technologist with the Center for Democracy and Technology. “If the malicious actor doesn’t provide the key, the data is lost forever unless the victim has a recent backup.”

Nationwide, the local governments that store and update voter registration data are typically ill-equipped to defend themselves against elite hackers.

State election officials told Reuters they have improved their cyber defenses since 2016, including in some cases preparing backups for voter registration databases in case of an attack. But there is no common standard for how often local governments should create backups, said a senior Homeland Security official.

“We have to remember that this threat to our democracy will not go away, and concern about ransomware attacks on voter registration databases is one clear example,” said Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos. “We’re sure the threat is far from over.”