Sunday, October 31, 2021
Monday, October 25, 2021
Saturday, October 23, 2021
Democrats to Copy France and Propose New "Make American Billionaires Emigrate" Legislation
For a long time, France has been known for its extremely high tax rate policies that forced well-known millionaires, such as GĂ©rard Depardieu (actor) and Bernard Arnault (the director of the luxury company LVMH) to leave the country and look for tax shelters in tax-friendly places. It is estimated that, only in 2015, around 10.000 millionaires left France for tax purposes. Also, the French income tax of up to 45%, which is one of the highest in the world, has triggered an exodus of high earning financiers and caused serious harm to the investment image of the country.
from the Washington Post
Democrats move to finalize new ‘billionaire’ tax proposal, targeting 700 wealthiest Americans as key source of revenue for spending planSeung Min Kim contributed to this report.
Senior Democrats are preparing a sweeping new tax plan that would aim to raise hundreds of billions of dollars from the fortunes of America’s roughly 700 billionaires, an abrupt shift in the party’s approach to funding a large expansion of the safety net.
For years, Democrats have argued for higher income and corporate tax rates, saying wealthy Americans and well-off companies should pay more to fund new social benefits, such as subsidized day care and paid family leave, that would primarily help working-class Americans and shrink inequality.
But even after Democrats seized control of the White House and Congress, they haven’t been able to fully coalesce around a tax and spending plan, with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) expressing opposition to higher tax rates.
Now, an unexpected compromise appears to be emerging on the billionaire tax proposal. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is drafting the plan, and senior Biden officials and other senior Democrats are cautiously optimistic that Sinema and other centrist lawmakers will support the effort, according to interviews with three congressional aides and two administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.
It is uncertain whether the plan will be backed by every Senate Democrat and almost every House Democrat, the necessary threshold for its passage.
The shifting nature of the tax legislation reflects the challenge Democrats face in trying to rebalance an American economy that most economists believe has grown increasingly unequal over the last several decades.
Here's whose taxes would go up under Democrats' tax plan
Democrats had largely united behind increasing taxes on those earning more than roughly $500,000 per year, while also raising the corporate tax rate paid by large firms. That approach was consistent with President Biden’s insistence that Americans earning less than $400,000 per year be spared any tax hikes, a pledge the administration considers necessary to protect the political popularity of any new taxes.
The new path under consideration represents an even starker attempt to narrowly tailor tax increases to avoid political blowback. It would shield not only the lower and middle classes but also exempt the bulk of the top 1 percent — concentrating the higher rates instead on the wealthiest 0.0002 percent.
The plan would also begin to address the populist tumult that roiled the Democratic Party during the last presidential race. Sinema spoke in recent days about tax policy with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), an advocate for the Wyden plan who helped popularize the idea of a wealth tax on billionaires during her campaign, according to spokespeople for both senators.
At the outset of negotiations, Biden pitched a plan to tax fortunes when they are passed down to heirs, aiming to close a loophole that allows rich Americans to receive large inheritances tax-free. That proposal collapsed, however, amid a revolt from Democrats in Iowa and Montana who warned that it could hurt family farms, even though Biden was open to exempting farms worth less than $25 million.
“Even before the pandemic, there had been decades of dramatically rising inequality, especially at the very, very top of the distribution. But the pandemic really crystallized the pathologies of that divergence,” said Austan Goolsbee, who served as a senior economist in the Obama administration. “Now that we need money to pay for these investments, you can see why Democrats would immediately turn to say: ‘Who has had the greatest time during this trying period? It’s the billionaires.’”
Some economists point out that rising inequality represents a much broader phenomenon than just increases in billionaire wealth, and argue that taxes capturing a much wider swath of the population are probably necessary to fund the transformative spending plans Democrats are pursuing.
Tax experts are also generally wary of creating a tax for such a small group of people that it may be easy to avoid, as well as inventing new tax programs out of whole cloth.
“Countries with a more robust welfare state tax everybody a bit more, rather than just the rich,” said Joshua McCabe, senior fellow for policy and welfare at the Niskanen Center, a center-right think tank. “The amount of revenue you can get from squeezing folks making more than $400,000 per year is small, and if you’re looking at billionaires it’s even smaller.”
The proposal would be incorporated into the reconciliation bill that Democrats hope to pass soon and could help offset the roughly $2 trillion the bill is likely to spend over 10 years on a variety of new federal programs.
The administration recently briefed congressional Democrats on other new sources of revenue that would raise trillions of dollars without increasing the corporate tax rate. Those included tougher tax enforcement by the IRS, a new global minimum tax and a new 15 percent minimum tax on corporations, among other measures.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that the spending plan could “absolutely” be paid for without an increase in the corporate tax rate, citing these options.
Democrats are still struggling to reach agreement on their broader measure, although House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Friday that lawmakers hope to have a deal within days. The tax component is just one of the many impasses Democrats must resolve, as the party remains divided over a raft of competing legislative priorities.
IRS records show wealthiest Americans, including Bezos and Musk, paid little in income taxes as share of wealth, report says
The billionaire plan newly under consideration by the Senate faces objections from House Democrats, who already advanced a roughly $2 trillion package that included rate hikes on the rich and on corporations. Some tax experts are also wary of creating a complicated new system of taxation in a matter of days. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) said the Wyden plan could “become really complex.”
“When you do rates, they’re efficient and they’re easily implemented. Unlike the more esoteric ideas of taxing this or taxing that, rates are simple by nature. People understand them,” Neal said. “There’s only one proposal on revenue that has passed a legislative body. It’s ours.”
Currently, wealthy Americans do not have to pay taxes on vast accumulations of wealth because they are taxed only once an asset is sold. Billionaires often borrow against their non-taxed assets, allowing them to spend enormous sums of money while effectively paying very low taxes relative to their income and worth.
Under the “Billionaire Income Tax” proposal, a summary of which was obtained by The Washington Post, the federal government would require billionaires to pay taxes on the increased value of assets such as stocks on an annual basis, regardless of whether they sell those assets. Billionaires would also be able to take deductions for any annual loss in value of those assets.
The plan would also set up a system for taxing assets that are not easily tradable, such as real estate. The tax would apply to billionaires and people earning more than $100 million in income three years in a row.
“A key of engine of the rise of wealth inequality is the very low effective tax rates billionaires currently have,” said Gabriel Zucman, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley. “Since the proposal would significantly increase their effective tax rate, it would be a significant step toward limiting the rise of wealth inequality.”
The White House’s legislative ambitions have generally narrowed in recent weeks as Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) have demanded major cuts to the size of the spending legislation. But the centrists have appeared open in recent days to aggressively taxing America’s billionaires — typically a demand of the left.
Sinema has balked at seemingly more modest proposals to raise tax rates on wealthy individuals and big corporations, and they appear to have fallen out of the legislation. That has led to a surprising renewed exploration of taxing billionaires, in part because there may be a political upside for Democrats in training the tax hikes on the extremely rich — most of whom live in California and New York, rather than swing states — rather than on the merely rich.
A spokesman for Sinema, John LaBombard, did not confirm or deny her support for the billionaire tax. He said in a statement that the senator “is committed to ensuring everyday families can get ahead and that we continue creating jobs. She has told her colleagues and the president that simply raising tax rates will not in any way address the challenge of tax avoidance or improve economic competitiveness.”
Where President Biden’s economic plan stands: From taxes to climate policy to Medicare to immigration
White House officials have been involved in crafting the plan, while officials at the Treasury Department have provided guidance as well, people familiar with the matter said. Biden has already publicly endorsed the concept.
Friday, October 22, 2021
America Leaves no One Behind...Unless Joe Biden is President.
State Dept. informed congressional staff Thursday that it is in touch with 363 American citizens in Afghanistan, 176 of whom want to leave, per @jmhansler
— Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) October 22, 2021
That is significantly higher than the estimates of roughly 100 in Aug. which Admin officials regularly cited.
Breaking Through Maryland's Covid Censorship.
Some may want to “Follow the Science” since a majority feel it is correct but math provides the true answers. Math takes the data and determines the trends. While we must learn from the past 22 months of this pandemic we also must understand the current trends so we can determine the correct path forward.In the first 3 months of 2020 in the US, 3,603 people died from Covid-19. In April the deaths accelerated and varied between 9k and 15k per week. Eventually, 333,199 died between April 1, 2020 and Dec 31, 2020 for a daily average of 1,216 deaths.
During the October 22nd 2020 debate Joe Biden stated, “Folks, I will take care of this. I will end this. I will make sure we have a plan”.
According to www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ there have been an additional 414,890 deaths from Covid-19 between Jan 1, 2021 and Oct 20, 2021. That equates to a new daily average of 1,421 deaths. The 2021 daily rate is 16.9% greater than 2020. In the math world we would say the plan has failed.
The following is an analysis of breakthrough cases and deaths in Maryland, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Covid-19 breakthrough cases or deaths are in fully vaccinated persons. Each state records their Covid-19 data differently which makes some data more readily available. It is practically impossible to get all the data for these states on the exact same dates.
From the Maryland.gov website we are told.
Vaccines are an effective and critical tool to bring the pandemic under control by helping to prevent infection, serious illness, hospitalization and death due to COVID-19. Although there are cases of people who become sick after they are fully vaccinated, cases where fully vaccinated people are hospitalized or die from COVID-19 are rare and vaccines remain the best way to prevent COVID-19 and its complications.
Then it states later,
Less than 0.71% sounds pretty low doesn’t it? The state of Maryland implies the vaccines are doing their job as Dr. Fauci has told us over and over again. Yet what is the trend?
Between Sept 22, 2021, and Oct 10, 2021, Maryland had an additional 21,864 Covid-19 cases which 7,233 or 33.1% of the cases were classified as breakthrough cases. Why doesn’t the state of Maryland give you this data versus the 0.71% number?
During this same period, Maryland lost 259 citizens to Covid-19. Of those 259 souls, 77 or 29.7% were fully vaccinated. Again, why does Maryland.gov water down that data?
In Massachusetts, for the four week ending period of Aug 28 through Sep 18, there were 44,773 Covid-19 cases which 37.1% were classified as breakthrough and 269 covid-19 deaths of which, 86 or 32.0% were in fully vaccinated people. For the four week ending period of Sep 25 through Oct 16, there were 38,228 Covid-19 cases which 40.8% were classified as breakthrough and 380 Covid-19 deaths of which, 154 or 40.5% were in fully vaccinated people.
These trends detail an obvious failure of the vaccine, but news outlets state that this fully vaccinated death count of 371 is only a very small percentage of the total vaccinated. What should be troubling to the Massachusetts public is those fully vaccinated account for an average of 39.2% of all deaths in the first two weeks of October.
In Pennsylvania, the acting Sec. of Health Alison Beam stated at a news conference at Lancaster General Hospital, “With nearly seven million Pennsylvanians fully vaccinated, the data makes it clear: the vaccines are safe and effective at preventing severe illness from Covid-19.”
However, recent analysis of cases and deaths between September 15 and Oct 4 show that in 132k cases, 26.1% of them were classified as breakthrough and 305 (26.5%) deaths out of a total of 1,153 were in fully vaccinated people. But Sec. of Health Alison Beam makes no mention of that.
While Vermont is a small state, the fully vaccinated share of the total loss of life from Covid-19 is an even higher percentage than any of the states reviewed so far. In September, according to the Vermont Daily Chronicle, 76% of those who died of Covid-19 were fully vaccinated.
When we look to the UK, the picture looks as bad as in Vermont except on a larger scale which should be a concern as our country’s numbers tend to lag the UK’s by a few weeks.
The following table from the UK government can be found here, on page 15. It shows that between week 37 and week 40, there was a total of 2,805 covid-19 deaths and 2,136 or 76.1% were fully vaccinated. These deaths happened within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test.
Recently, Dr. Robert Malone, who developed the mRNA technology, was interviewed on The Jimmy Dore Show and stated, “overuse of vaccines will drive the development of viruses that are able to evade vaccinations”.
Vaccinating those that aren’t at risk drives this development of further variants which could be killing more of our elderly.
Hopefully, we can learn from these trending hardships in the UK, that a booster shot that was designed for the initial variant discovered in the fall of 2019 can’t be the silver bullet against the variants in the 2021/2022 Covid-19 season. When will we realize that statements like, “we can vaccinate ourselves out of a pandemic”, could actually be very dangerous to our young and killing our elderly?
Why is our 2021 daily death toll, with vaccine use, 16.9% greater than in 2020 when no vaccine was readily available?
The following Virginia data was obtained.If a current protocol has failed, we need to discard it. If the majority of deaths are in a specific age group we need to focus on that age group and protect their lives. We need to stop spending time on scare tactics with other groups who are at minimal risk of death, by coercing them or mandating them into getting an experimental vaccine without knowledge of long-term side effects.The old saying, “knowledge is power, get some” is more relevant than ever now. Math is a beautiful thing.
Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Clinton's Russia Shenaniggins
Here are the prime movers of the false Trump-Russia theory that roiled U.S. politics for years: Clinton lawyers Michael Sussmann, left, and Marc Elias. Some of Sussmann's role emerges in his recent indictment for lying to the FBI -- but more consequential acts are outlined below. And Elias's role in the Steele dossier was hidden through lies, "with sanctimony, for a year," as one journalist put it.
The indictment of Hillary Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann for allegedly lying to the FBI sheds new light on the pivotal role of Democratic operatives in the Russiagate affair. The emerging picture shows Sussmann and his Perkins Coie colleague Marc Elias, the chief counsel for Clinton's 2016 campaign, proceeding on parallel, coordinated tracks to solicit and spread disinformation tying Donald Trump to the Kremlin.
In a detailed charging document last month, Special Counsel John Durham accused Sussmann of concealing his work for the Clinton campaign while trying to sell the FBI on the false claim of a secret Trump backchannel to Russia’s Alfa Bank. But Sussmann's alleged false statement to the FBI in September 2016 wasn't all. Just months before, he helped generate an even more consequential Russia allegation that he also brought to the FBI. In April of that year, Sussmann hired CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that publicly triggered the Russiagate saga by lodging the still unproven claim that Russia was behind the hack of Democratic National Committee emails released by WikiLeaks.
At the time, CrowdStrike was not the only Clinton campaign contractor focusing on Russia. Just days before Sussmann hired CrowdStrike in April, his partner Elias retained the opposition research firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Trump and the Kremlin.
These two Clinton campaign contractors, working directly for two Clinton campaign attorneys, would go on to play highly consequential roles in the ensuing multi-year Russia investigation.
Working secretly for the Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS planted Trump-Russia conspiracy theories in the FBI and US media via its subcontractor, former British spy Christopher Steele. The FBI used the Fusion GPS's now debunked "Steele dossier" for investigative leads and multiple surveillance applications putatively targeting Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page.
CrowdStrike, reporting to Sussmann, also proved critical to the FBI's work. Rather than examine the DNC servers for itself, the FBI relied on CrowdStrike's forensics as mediated by Sussmann.
The FBI's odd relationship with the two Democratic Party contractors gave Sussmann and Elias unprecedented influence over a high-stakes national security scandal that upended U.S. politics and ensnared their political opponents. By hiring CrowdStrike and Fusion GPS, the Perkins Coie lawyers helped define the Trump-Russia narrative and impact the flow of information to the highest reaches of U.S. intelligence agencies.
The established Trump-Russia timeline and the public record, including overlooked sworn testimony, congressional and Justice Department reports, as well as news accounts from the principal recipients of government leaks in the affair, the Washington Post and the New York Times, help to fill in the picture.
In late April 2016, after being informed by Graham Wilson, a Perkins Coie colleague, that the DNC server had been breached, Michael Sussmann immediately turned to CrowdStrike. As Sussmann recalled in December 2017 testimony to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the cyber firm was hired based on his "recommendation."
Although it is widely believed that CrowdStrike worked for the DNC, the firm in fact was retained by Sussmann and his Clinton campaign law firm. As CrowdStrike CEO Shawn Henry told the House committee, his contract was not with the DNC, but instead "with Michael Sussmann from Perkins Coie."
And it was Sussmann who controlled what the FBI was allowed to see. After bringing CrowdStrike on board, Sussmann pushed aggressively to publicize the firm's conclusion that Russian government hackers had attacked the DNC server, according to a December 2016 account in the New York Times.
"Within a day, CrowdStrike confirmed that the intrusion had originated in Russia," the Times reported, citing Sussmann's recollection. Sussmann and DNC executives had their first formal meeting with senior FBI officials in June 2016, where they encouraged the bureau to publicly endorse CrowdStrike's findings:Among the early requests at that meeting, according to participants: that the federal government make a quick "attribution" formally blaming actors with ties to Russian government for the attack to make clear that it was not routine hacking but foreign espionage.But the FBI was not ready to point the finger at Russia. As the Senate Intelligence Committee later reported, "CrowdStrike still had not provided the FBI with forensic images nor an unredacted copy of their [CrowdStrike’s] report."
“You have a presidential election underway here and you know that the Russians have hacked into the D.N.C.,” Mr. Sussmann said, recalling the message to the F.B.I. “We need to tell the American public that. And soon.”
Instead of waiting for the FBI, the DNC went public with the Russian hacking allegation on its own. On June 14, 2016, the Washington Post broke the news that CrowdStrike was accusing Russian hackers of infiltrating the DNC's computer network and stealing data. Sussmann and Henry were quoted as sources. According to the Times' account, the DNC approached the Post "on Mr. Sussmann’s advice."
The Washington Post's June 2016 story, generated by Sussmann, was the opening public salvo in the Russiagate saga.
But it was not until nearly four years later that the public learned that CrowdStrike was not as confident about the Russian hacking allegation that it had publicly lodged. In December 2017 testimony that was declassified only in May 2020, Henry admitted that his firm was akin to a bank examiner who believes the vault has been robbed – but has no proof of how. CrowdStrike, Henry disclosed, "did not have concrete evidence" that alleged Russian hackers removed any data from the DNC servers.
"There's circumstantial evidence, but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated," Henry told the House Intelligence Committee. "There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in this case it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left."
Read in retrospect, public statements from U.S. intelligence officials indicate that they knew of this crucial gap early on, and used qualified language to gloss it over.
A joint FBI-DHS report in December 2016 – the first time the US government attempted to present evidence that Russia hacked the DNC – describes the alleged Russian hacking effort as "likely leading to the exfiltration of information" from Democratic Party networks. (Emphasis added.)
The report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller of April 2019, which found no Trump-Russia collusion, likewise stated that Russian intelligence "appears to have compressed and exfiltrated over 70 gigabytes of data" and "appear to have stolen thousands of emails and attachments" from Democratic Party servers. (Emphasis added.)
These qualifiers – "likely" and "appear" – signaled that U.S. intelligence officials lacked concrete evidence for their Russian hacking claims, a major evidentiary hole confirmed by Henry's buried testimony.
CrowdStrike's admission that it lacked evidence of exfiltration was not its first such embarrassment. Just months after it accused Russia of hacking the DNC in June 2016, CrowdStrike was forced to retract a similar accusation that Russia had hacked the Ukrainian military. The firm's debunked Ukrainian allegation was based on it claiming to have identified the same malware in Ukraine that it had found inside the DNC server.
The FBI relied on CrowdStrike's forensics of the DNC servers, but both sides have given conflicting accounts as to why. The FBI claims that the DNC denied it direct access to its computer network, while the DNC claims that the FBI never sought such access. Once again, Sussmann was in the middle of this, and his sworn testimony is at odds with other accounts.
In their December 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, both Sussmann and CrowdStrike's Henry claimed that the FBI did not try to conduct its own independent investigation of the DNC servers.
"I recall offering, or asking or offering to the FBI to come on premises, and they were not interested in coming on premises at the time," Sussmann said. Instead, he recalled, "we told them they could have access to everything that CrowdStrike was developing in the course of its investigation." Asked directly if the FBI sought access to the DNC servers, Sussmann replied: "No, they did not." He then added: "Excuse me, not to my knowledge."
Henry also told the committee that he was "not aware" of the FBI ever asking for access to the server or being denied it.
In 2017 congressional testimony, however, then-FBI Director James Comey recalled that the FBI made "multiple requests at different levels," to access the DNC servers, but was denied. Asked why FBI access was rejected, Comey replied: "I don’t know for sure." According to Comey, the FBI would have preferred direct access to the server, but "ultimately it was agreed to… [CrowdStrike] would share with us what they saw."
And while Sussmann testified that Perkins Coie offered the FBI "access to everything that CrowdStrike was developing," FBI officials and federal prosecutors tell a different story.
According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, CrowdStrike delivered a draft report to the FBI on Aug. 31, 2016 that an unidentified FBI official described as "heavily redacted." James Trainor, then-assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division, told the committee that he was "frustrated" with the CrowdStrike report and "doubted its completeness" because "outside counsel" – i.e. Sussmann – "had reviewed it." According to Trainor, the DNC's cooperation was "moderate" overall and "slow and laborious in many respects." Trainor singled out the fact that Perkins Coie – and specifically, Sussmann – "scrubbed" the CrowdStrike information before it was delivered to the FBI, resulting in a "stripped-down version" that was "not optimal."
In court filings during the prosecution of Trump associate Roger Stone, the Justice Department revealed that Sussmann, as the DNC's attorney, submitted three CrowdStrike reports to the FBI in draft, redacted form. According to prosecutor Jessie Liu, the government "does not possess" CrowdStrike's unredacted reports. It instead relied on Sussmann's assurances "that the redacted material concerned steps taken to remediate the attack and to harden the DNC and DCCC systems against future attack," and that "no redacted information concerned the attribution of the attack to Russian actors."
In short, the FBI failed to conduct its own examination of the DNC server, and instead relied on CrowdStrike's forensics. It also allowed Sussmann – now indicted for lying as part of an effort to spread the Russiagate conspiracy theory – to decide what it could and could not see in CrowdStrike's reports on Russian hacking. The government also took Sussmann's word that the redacted information did not concern "the attribution of the attack to Russian actors."
CrowdStrike's reports on the DNC server breach have never been publicly released. RealClearInvestigations has sought to obtain them under the Freedom of Information Act, but that request remains pending.
One source, who was able to review some of the redacted CrowdStrike reports and requested anonymity because this person is not authorized to publicly discuss them, said that they were unconvincing. "My impression was that CrowdStrike was trying very, very hard to make a case that this was Russia," the source told RCI. "Their case, to me, was weak."
Although Special Counsel Durham has recently subpoenaed Perkins Coie for documents, there are no indications that CrowdStrike's work for the firm is a focus of his inquiry. A CrowdStrike spokesperson told RealClearInvestigations that the company has not heard from Durham's office.
In response to questions about CrowdStrike, an attorney for Sussmann told RealClearInvestigations: "Mr. Sussmann is not answering questions at this time."
In addition to revealing a major evidentiary gap regarding alleged Russian hacking, Henry's December 2017 testimony revealed that Sussmann's law firm exerted significant influence over the flow of information in CrowdStrike's handling of it.
Joining Henry at the deposition was Sussmann's Perkins Coie partner, Graham Wilson, who represented the DNC, and David Lashway, who represented CrowdStrike.
Henry's acknowledgment that CrowdStrike did not have "concrete evidence" of exfiltration came only after he was interrupted and prodded by his attorneys to correct an initial answer. After claiming that he knew when Russian hackers exfiltrated data from the DNC, Henry offered a sharp correction: "Counsel just reminded me that, as it relates to the DNC, we have indicators that data was exfiltrated. We do not have concrete evidence that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated."
In another exchange, Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah pressed Henry to explain why the FBI relied on CrowdStrike. "I don't understand why the FBI wouldn't lead or at least have some role in investigating the evidence," Stewart said. "…Could they [the FBI] conduct their own investigation in a thorough fashion without access to the actual hardware?"
Henry struggled to respond to Stewart's queries, before finally answering: "You're asking me to speculate. I don't know the answer."
At this point, Stewart noted that Henry had been actively consulting with his Perkins Coie attorney. "By the way, you need to pay him [Henry's attorney] well, because he's obviously serving you well today as you guys have your conversations back and forth together," Stewart quipped.
Shortly after that exchange, the attorney present for CrowdStrike, Lashway, stressed that Henry's testimony was subject to Perkins Coie's discretion. Henry was discussing "work that was performed at the behest of counsel, Perkins Coie, Mr. Sussmann's law firm," Lashway said. Accordingly, he added, "we would turn to Perkins Coie, as counsel to the DNC, to ensure that Mr. Henry can actually answer some of these questions."
The CrowdStrike-Perkins Coie contract, signed in early May 2016, ensured that Sussmann and his firm would oversee the cyber firm's work product, and subject it to the secrecy of attorney-client privilege.
The Perkins Coie-CrowdStrike contract is similar to the arrangement between the firm and another contractor pivotal to the Trump-Russia investigation, Fusion GPS.
After being hired in the same month of April, the two firms also lodged their respective Russia-related allegations within days of each other two months later in June. Just six days after CrowdStrike went public with the allegation that Russia had hacked the DNC on June 14, Christopher Steele produced the first report in what come to be known as the Steele dossier.
Over the ensuing months, the two firms and their Democratic clients actively spread their claims to the FBI and media. Steele and Fusion GPS, backed by their Perkins Coie client Elias, shared the fabricated dossier claims with eager FBI agents and credulous journalists, all while hiding that the Clinton campaign and DNC were footing the bill. "Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year," the New York Times' Maggie Haberman commented when Elias' secret payments to Fusion GPS were revealed in October 2017.
After going public with its Russian hacking allegation in June, CrowdStrike had contact with the FBI "over a hundred times in the course of many months," CEO Henry recalled. This included sharing with the FBI its redacted reports, and providing it with "a couple of actual digital images" of DNC hard drives, out of a total number of "in excess of 10, I think," Henry testified. When Wikileaks released stolen DNC emails on the eve of the Democratic convention in July, senior Clinton campaign officials doggedly promoted CrowdStrike's claim that Russia had hacked them.
In congressional testimony, Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson said that it was an "extraordinary coincidence” that the Russian hacking allegation (by fellow Clinton/Perkins Coie contractor CrowdStrike) overlapped with his firm's Trump-Russia collusion hunt (while working for Clinton/Perkins Coie).
Coincidence is one possibility. Another is that the roles of Sussman and Elias behind CrowdStrike and Fusion GPS's highly consequential claims about Russia and the 2016 election could be pillars of the same deception.
Whatever additional scrutiny they may face, it will no longer be as partners at Perkins Coie. Elias, who was also the Democrats' leading election law attorney opposing Trump challenges to the 2020 vote, resigned in August to launch a new firm, taking 13 colleagues with him. Upon his indictment by Durham three weeks later, Sussmann stepped down as well to focus, he said, on his legal defense.
Monday, October 18, 2021
Saturday, October 16, 2021
Is Big Brother Getting More Neurotic...???
MAX BLUMENTHAL, "Reuters, BBC, and Bellingcat participated in covert UK Foreign Office-funded programs to “weaken Russia,” leaked docs reveal"
New leaked documents show Reuters’ and the BBC’s involvement in covert UK FCO programs to effect “attitudinal change” and “weaken the Russian state’s influence,” alongside intel contractors and Bellingcat.
The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) have sponsored Reuters and the BBC to conduct a series of covert programs aimed at promoting regime change inside Russia and undermining its government across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, according to a series of leaked documents.
The leaked materials show the Thomson Reuters Foundation and BBC Media Action participating in a covert information warfare campaign aimed at countering Russia. Working through a shadowy department within the UK FCO known as the Counter Disinformation & Media Development (CDMD), the media organizations operated alongside a collection of intelligence contractors in a secret entity known simply as “the Consortium.”
Through training programs of Russian journalists overseen by Reuters, the British Foreign Office sought to produce an “attitudinal change in the participants,” promoting a “positive impact” on their “perception of the UK.”
“These revelations show that when MPs were railing about Russia, British agents were using the BBC and Reuters to deploy precisely the same tactics that politicians and media commentators were accusing Russia of using,” Chris Williamson, a former UK Labour MP who attempted to apply public scrutiny to the CDMD’s covert activities and was stonewalled on national security grounds, told The Grayzone.
“The BBC and Reuters portray themselves as an unimpeachable, impartial, and authoritative source of world news,” Williamson continued, “but both are now hugely compromised by these disclosures. Double standards like this just bring establishment politicians and corporate media hacks into further disrepute.”
Thomson Reuters Foundation spokesperson Jenny Vereker implicitly confirmed the authenticity of the leaked documents in an emailed response to questions from The Grayzone. However, she contended, “The inference that the Thomson Reuters Foundation was engaged in ‘secret activities’ is inaccurate and misrepresents our work in the public interest. We have for decades openly supported a free press and have worked to help journalists globally to develop the skills needed to report with independence.”
The batch of leaked files closely resembles UK FCO-related documents released between 2018 and 2020 by a hacking collective calling itself Anonymous. The same source has claimed credit for obtaining the latest round of documents.
The Grayzone reported in October 2020 on leaked materials released by Anonymous which exposed a massive propaganda campaign funded by the UK FCO to cultivate support for regime change in Syria. Soon after, the Foreign Office claimed its computer systems had been penetrated by hackers, thus confirming their authenticity.
The new leaks illustrate in alarming detail how Reuters and the BBC – two of the largest and most distinguished news organizations in the world – attempted to answer the British foreign ministry’s call for help in improving its “ability to respond and to promote our message across Russia,” and to “counter the Russian government’s narrative.” Among the UK FCO’s stated goals, according to the director of the CDMD, was to “weaken the Russian State’s influence on its near neighbours.”
Reuters and the BBC solicited multimillion-dollar contracts to advance the British state’s interventionist aims, promising to cultivate Russian journalists through FCO-funded tours and training sessions, establish influence networks in and around Russia, and promote pro-NATO narratives in Russian-speaking regions.
In several proposals to the British Foreign Office, Reuters boasted of a global influence network of 15,000 journalists and staff, including 400 inside Russia.
The UK FCO projects were carried out covertly, and in partnership with purportedly independent, high-profile online media outfits including Bellingcat, Meduza, and the Pussy Riot-founded Mediazona. Bellingcat’s participation apparently included a UK FCO intervention in North Macedonia’s 2019 elections on behalf of the pro-NATO candidate.
The intelligence contractors that oversaw that operation, the Zinc Network, boasted of establishing “a network of YouTubers in Russia and Central Asia” while “supporting participants [to] make and receive international payments without being registered as external sources of funding.” The firm also touted its ability to “activate a range of content” to support anti-government protests inside Russia.
The new documents provide critical background on the role of NATO member states like the UK in influencing the color revolution-style protests waged in Belarus in 2020, and raise unsettling questions about the intrigue and unrest surrounding jailed Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny.
Further, the materials cast serious doubt on the independence of two of the world’s largest and most prestigious media organizations, revealing Reuters and the BBC as apparent intelligence cut-outs feasting at the trough of a British national security state that their news operations are increasingly averse to scrutinizing.
Reuters solicits secret British Foreign Office contract to infiltrate Russian media
A series of official documents declassified in January 2020 revealed that Reuters was secretly funded by the British government throughout the 1960s and 1970s to assist an anti-Soviet propaganda organization run by the MI6 intelligence agency. The UK government used the BBC as a pass-through to conceal payments to the news group.
The revelation prompted a Reuters spokesman to declare that “the arrangement in 1969 [with the MI6] was not in keeping with our Trust Principles and we would not do this today.”
The Trust Principles outline a mission of “preserving [Reuters’] independence, integrity, and freedom from bias in the gathering and dissemination of information and news.”
In its own statement of values, the BBC proclaims, “Trust is the foundation of the BBC. We’re independent, impartial and honest.”
However, the newly leaked documents analyzed by The Grayzone appear to reveal that both Reuters and the BBC are engaged yet again in a non-transparent relationship with the UK’s foreign ministry to counter and undermine Russia.
In 2017, the non-profit arm of the Reuters media empire, the Thomson Reuters Foundation (TRF), delivered a formal tender offering to “enter into a Contract with the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, as represented by the British Embassy Moscow, for the provision of a project ‘Capacity Building in Russian Media.'” The letter was signed by Reuters CEO Monique Ville on July 31, 2017.
Reuters’ tender was a response to a call for bids by the FCO, which sought help in implementing “a programme of themed tours to the UK by Russian journalists and online influencers.”
Working through the British Embassy in Moscow, the FCO sought to produce an “attitudinal change in the participants,” promoting a “positive impact” on their “perception of the UK.”
In 2019, the FCO put forward a similar initiative, this time articulating a more aggressive plan to “counter the Russian government’s narrative and domination of the media and information space.” In effect, the British government was seeking to infiltrate Russian media and propagate its own narrative through an influence network of Russian journalists trained in the UK.
Reuters responded to both calls by the FCO with detailed tenders. In its first bid, the media giant boasted of establishing a global network of 15,000 journalists and bloggers through “capacity building interventions.” In Russia, it claimed at least 400 journalists had been cultivated through its training programs.
Reuters claimed to have performed 10 previous training tours for 80 Russian journalists on behalf of the British embassy in Moscow. It proposed eight more, promising to promote “UK cultural and political values” and “create a network of journalists across Russia” bonded together by a shared “interest in British affairs.”
Reuters’ tender highlighted the institutional prejudices and interventionist agenda that underlined its training programs. Detailing a series of UK FCO-funded programs dedicated to “countering Russian state-funded propaganda,” Reuters conflated Russian government narratives with extremism. Ironically, it referred to its own efforts at weakening them as “unbiased journalism.”
At the same time, Reuters appeared to recognize that its covert collaboration with the British Embassy in Moscow was highly provocative and potentially destructive to diplomatic relations. Recounting a UK FCO-funded tour it ran for Russian journalists in the midst of the Sergei Skripal affair, after the British government accused Moscow of poisoning a turncoat Russian intelligence officer who spied for Britain, the tender stated, “[Thomson Reuters Foundation] was in constant communication with the British Embassy in Moscow, to assess levels of risk, including reputational risk to the embassy.”
The mention by Reuters of the Belarusian TV Station Belsat, and its particular relevance “to the UK Government Strategy’s capacity to detect and counter the spread of Russian information” was notable. While describing itself as “the first independent television channel in Belarus,” Belsat is, as the Reuters tender makes clear, a vehicle of NATO influence.
Based in Poland and funded by the Polish Foreign Ministry and other EU governments, Belsat played an influential role in promoting the color revolution-style protests that erupted in May 2020 to demand the ouster of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Ultimately, Reuters’ bid appears to have been successful, as it received a July 2019 contract with the FCO’s Conflict, Stability & Security Fund (CSSF). But neither entity seemed to want the public to know about their collaboration on a project designed to counter Russia. The contract was marked “Strictly Confidential.”
“Weaken the Russian state’s influence”
The programs exposed through the latest leak of documents operate under the auspices of a shadowy division of the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office called Counter Disinformation & Media Development (CDMD). Led by an intelligence operative named Andy Pryce, the program has shrouded in secrecy.
Indeed, the British government has denied freedom of information requests about the division’s budget and stonewalled members of parliament like Chris Williamson who sought data about its budget and agenda, citing national security to block their demands for information.
“When I tried to probe further,” former MP Williamson told The Grayzone, “ministers refused to let me have access to any documents or correspondence relating to this organization’s activities. I was told that releasing this information could ‘disrupt and undermine the program’s effectiveness.’”
During a meeting convened in London on June 26, 2018, Pryce outlined a new FCO program “to weaken the Russian State’s influence on its near neighbors.” He solicited a consortium of firms to assist the British state in establishing new and seemingly independent media outlets to counter Russian government-backed media in Moscow’s immediate sphere of influence, and to amplify the messaging of NATO-aligned governments.
Justified on the basis of Russia’s supposed intention to “sow disunity and course[sic] disruption to democratic processes,” the campaign Pryce laid out was more aggressive and far-reaching than anything Russia has been caught doing in the West.
Pryce emphasized that secrecy was of the essence, warning that “some grantees will not wish to be linked to the FCO.”
A year later, the FCO’s CDMD division outlined a program to run through 2022 at a cost of $8.3 million to the British taxpayer. It aimed to establish new outlets and support preexisting media operations “to counter Russia’s efforts to sow disunity” and “increase resilience to hostile Kremlin messaging in the Baltic states.”
Thus the British government set out with an array of intelligence contractors to dominate Baltic media with pro-NATO messaging – and perhaps sow some disunity of its own.
As seen below, the BBC placed an apparently successful bid to participate in the covert Baltic program through its non-profit arm, known as BBC Media Action.
The BBC also proposed to participate in a separate UK FCO media propaganda program in Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia. It named Reuters and a now-defunct intelligence contractor called Aktis Strategy, which participated in previous FCO CDMD programs, as key allies in its consortium.
The BBC identified local partners like Hromadske, a Kiev-based broadcast network born in the midst of the so-called Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” in 2014 that relied on ultra-nationalist muscle to remove an elected president and install a pro-NATO regime. Hromadske materialized almost overnight with seed money and logistical support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and billionaire media mogul Pierre Omidyar’s Network Fund.
BBC Media Action proposed working through Aktis to cultivate and grow pro-NATO media in conflict areas like the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where a proxy war has raged since 2014 between the Western-backed Ukrainian military and pro-Russian separatists. It was textbook information warfare, weaponizing broadcast media to turn the tide of battle in a protracted, grinding conflict.
The UK FCO propaganda campaign warned that “Kremlin-affiliated structures” could undermine the project if it was exposed. For a media organization that claims to place trust at the heart of its charter of values, the BBC was certainly operating under a high degree of secrecy.
The UK FCO’s meddling in Eastern Europe and the Baltics created a feeding frenzy among contractors seeking to provide “capacity building” and media development assistance on Russia’s periphery. Among the bidders were Reuters and veteran FCO contractors that had participated in an array of information warfare campaigns from Syria to the British home front.
The Consortium
Among the intelligence contractors bidding to participate in the UK FCO-funded Consortium were the Zinc Network and Albany Communications. As journalist Kit Klarenberg noted in a February 18 report on the recent FCO leaks, these firms “boast staff possessed of [security] clearances, individuals who previously served at the highest levels of government, the military and security services. They furthermore have extensive experience in conducting information warfare operations on London’s behalf the world over.”
Previously known as Breakthrough, Zinc has contracted for the UK Home Office to covertly implement media projects propagandizing British Muslims under the auspices of the Prevent de-radicalization initiative. In Australia, Zinc was caught running a clandestine program to promote support for government policies among Muslims.
Ben Norton reported for The Grayzone on Albany’s record of “secur[ing] the participation of an extensive local network of over 55 stringers, reporters and videographers” to influence media narratives and advance Western regime-change goals in Syria, while conducting public relations services on behalf of extremist Syrian militias funded by NATO member states and Gulf monarchies to destabilize the country.
In its bid for the UK FCO media program in the Baltic region, Albany proposed a series of satirical “interactive games” like “Putin Bingo” to encourage opposition to the Russian government and exploit “frustrations experienced by Russians in the EU.”
Albany pitched a Latvia-based outlet called Meduza as “a leading proponent of these games.” A top website among Russian opposition supporters, Meduza has received financial support from the Swedish government and several billionaire-backed pro-NATO foundations.
As a UK FCO contractor, the Zinc Network said it was “delivering audience segmentation and targeting support” not only to Meduza, but also to Mediazona, a supposedly independent media venture founded by two members of the anti-Kremlin performance art group Pussy Riot.
One of Mediazona’s founders, Nadya Tolokonnikova, shared a stage with former US President Bill Clinton at the Clinton Foundation’s 2015 conference. The following year, Tolokonnikova trashed now-imprisoned Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, claiming, “He’s connected with the Russian government, and I feel that he’s proud of it.”
Besides delivering “targeting support” for “independent” outlets pushing the right line against the Kremlin, Zinc proposed leveraging UK FCO funding into a program of direct payments and gaming Google search results in their favor. The intelligence cut-out was explicit about its desire to reduce the search visibility of the Russian government-backed broadcaster RT.com.
The UK covertly funded and managed a network of Russian YouTubers and “activated” anti-government protest content
In a document marked “private and confidential,” Zinc revealed the Consortium’s role in setting up a “YouTuber network” in Russia and Central Asia designed to propagate the message of the UK and its NATO allies.
According to Zinc, the Consortium was “supporting participants mak[ing] and receiv[ing] international payments without being registered as external sources of funding,” presumably to circumvent Russian registration requirements for foreign-funded media outfits.
Zinc also helped the YouTube influencers “develop editorial strategies to deliver key messages” while working “to keep their involvement confidential.” And it carried out its entire program of covert propaganda in the name of “promoting media integrity and democratic values.”
Perhaps the most prominent Russian YouTube influencer is Alexei Navalny, a previously marginal nationalist opposition figure who was nominated for a Nobel Prize after becoming the target of a high-profile poisoning incident that brought relations between Russia and the West to its post-Cold War nadir.
The Russian government’s sentencing of Navalny to a 2.5-year prison term for evading parole has inspired a new wave of anti-government protests. Back in 2018, Navalny personally co-sponsored national demonstrations against the banning of the encrypted messaging app Telegram.
In its bid for a UK FCO contract, Zinc revealed that it played a behind-the-scenes role “to activate a range of content within 12 hours of the recent telegram protests.” Whether those activities involved Navalny or his immediate network was unclear, but the private disclosure by Zinc appeared confirm that British intelligence played a role in amplifying the 2018 protests.
Russian intelligence services have released sting video footage showing Vladimir Ashurkov, the executive director of Navalny’s FBK anti-corruption organization, meeting in 2013 with a suspected British MI6 agent named James William Thomas Ford, who was operating out of the British embassy in Moscow. During the rendezvous, Ashurkov can be heard asking for 10 to 20 million dollars to generate “quite a different picture” of the political landscape.
In 2018, Ashurkov’s name appeared in leaked documents exposing a covert, UK FCO influence network called the Integrity Initiative. As The Grayzone reported, the Integrity Initiative operated behind the cover of a think tank called the Institute for Statecraft, which concealed its own location through a fake office in Scotland.
Run by a group of military intelligence officers, the secret propaganda group worked through clusters of media and political influencers to escalate tensions between the West and Russia. Listed among the London cluster of anti-Russian influencers was Ashurkov.
The Integrity Initiative’s military directors outlined their agenda in stark, unequivocal terms. As the leaked memo below illustrates, they aimed to exploit the media, think tanks and their influence network to stir up as much hysteria about Russia’s supposedly malign influence as possible. Since they embarked on their covert campaign, nearly all their wishes have come true.
Bellingcat joins the Zinc Network, allegedly meddles in North Macedonia’s elections
After Alexei Navalny’s poisoning, he collaborated with the UK-based “open source” journalism outfit Bellingcat to pin the crime on Russia’s FSB intelligence services. Though it is well established that Bellingcat is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, a US government entity that supports regime-change operations around the globe, the fact has never appeared in the reams of fawning profiles that corporate media outlets, including Reuters, have published about the organization.
Bellingcat’s role as a partner in the Zinc Network’s UK FCO-funded EXPOSE Consortium may add an additional layer of suspicion about the outlet’s claim to independence.
Indeed, Bellingcat was listed in leaked 2018 documents as a key member of Zinc’s “Network of NGOs.” Among the members in the network was the Institute for Statecraft, the front for the Integrity Initiative.
Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins has vehemently denied accepting funding from the UK FCO or collaborating with it. But after Zinc documents leaked in early 2019, Higgins disclosed that some version of the Zinc proposal had received the green light from the Foreign Office.
Christian Triebbert, a Bellingcat staff member who was named as a potential trainer by the Zinc documents, and who now heads the New York Times’ video investigations unit, claimed the program consisted of benign workshops on “digital research and verification skills.”
What he and Higgins did not mention, however, was that Bellingcat had apparently been dispatched by the Zinc Network to “respond” to the 2019 parliamentary elections in North Macedonia. Stakes were high as the elections were likely to determine whether the tiny country would enter NATO and join the EU. The pro-NATO candidate triumphed, and not without a little help from the British Foreign Office and its allies.
According to the Zinc proposal, Bellingcat provided training to the Most Network, a Macedonian media outlet. It was joined by DFR Lab, a project of the NATO- and US government-funded Atlantic Council in Washington, DC.
After apparently participating in the covert UK FCO-funded intervention in North Macedonia, Bellingcat published an article ahead of the country’s 2020 parliamentary elections entitled, “Russia’s interference in North Macedonia.”
Several Zinc Network documents list Reuters as a member of the UK FCO-funded Consortium media intervention in the Baltic states.
Asked by The Grayzone how Reuters’ participation in UK FCO-funded programs aimed at countering Russia conformed to the news organization’s Trust Principles, spokesperson Jenny Vereker stated, “This funding supports our independent work to assist journalists and journalism all over the world, as part of our mission to strengthen a free and vibrant global media ecosystem to support a plurality of voices and preserve the flow of accurate and independent information. This is because accurate and balanced news coverage is a crucial pillar of any free, fair and informed society.”
In recent years, the BBC and Reuters have played an increasingly aggressive part in demonizing the governments of countries where London and Washington are seeking regime change. Meanwhile, high-profile online investigative outlets like Bellingcat have sprouted up seemingly overnight to assist these efforts.
With the release of the UK FCO documents, questions must be raised about whether these esteemed news organizations are truly the independent and ethical journalistic entities they claim to be. While they hammer away at “authoritarian” states and malign Russian activities, they have little to say about the machinations of the powerful Western governments in their immediate midst. Perhaps they are reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them.