FBI
April 13, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The New York Times has seven bylines on its story identifying Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira as “[t]he leader of a small online gaming chat group where a trove of classified U.S. intelligence documents leaked over the last few months.” That would be the group to which the leaker — Mr. OG — belonged, per the Washington Post this morning. At any rate, Teixeira dos not seem to conform
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April 13, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The Washington Post purports to have identified the leaker of the sensitive Pentagon documents that were rolled out on social media earlier this year and reported by the New York Times in this April 8 story (and several follow-ups since then including this one today). Now the Washington Post claims to have identified the leaker in “Leaker of U.S. secret documents worked on military base, friend says,” by Shane Harris
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April 7, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
Michael Shellenberger, one of three independent journalists tasked by Twitter CEO Elon Musk to investigate and expose the contents of the “Twitter Files,” joined Spotify podcaster Joe Rogan last week to discuss what the trio has discovered about the infiltration of social media platforms by U.S. intelligence agencies. One of Shellenberger’s most illuminating revelations involved a June 2020 “tabletop exercise” conducted by the Aspen Institute, a progressive nonprofit whose stated
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March 26, 2023 — John Hinderaker
I haven’t followed the January 6 prosecutions as closely as I probably should have. I thought it was obvious that the Capitol riot was the most overblown story of modern times. The idea that the protesters who entered the Capitol (mostly peacefully, as far as I could see, more or less invited in by Capitol guards) were mounting an “insurrection” was and is absurd, given that not a single one
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March 15, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
Yes, he really said that. Speaking to a group of mass shooting survivors in Monterey Park, California, on Tuesday, President Joe Biden said, “Congressional Republicans should pass my budget instead of calling for cuts in these [mental health] services or defunding the police or abolishing the FBI, as we hear from our MAGA Republican friends.” Biden: "Congressional Republicans should pass my budget instead of calling [for] defunding the police." pic.twitter.com/YpAlG7Kq3d —
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March 1, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
Although FBI Director Christopher Wray dodged his way through a Tuesday night interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, he answered one question with remarkable clarity. Referencing Sunday’s report in The Wall Street Journal, Baier noted that the Energy Department had revised its assessment of the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on new intelligence, the agency now concludes with “low confidence” that the virus originated from an accidental laboratory leak at
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February 19, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The current issue of Imprimis carries an adaptation of John Daniel Davidson’s February 7 Hillsdale College lecture on the Twitter Files. The title of the lecture is “The Twitter Files Reveal an Existential Threat.” Davidson begins with a point I have made several times in my own comments on the Twitter Files: Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter last October and the subsequent reporting on the Twitter Files by journalists Matt
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February 16, 2023 — Scott Johnson
By reference to “MS.” I am reverting to my preferred euphemism for classified documents in the unauthorized possession of Joe Biden. In today’s installment of the saga we learn that the FBI has conducted two searches of the archives of Biden’s papers that the president has deposited at the University of Delaware under restrictive conditions. CNN reports: Investigators retrieved materials from two university locations on two different days. The material
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February 16, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The Twitter Files lie at the intersection of the law enforcement and national security establishment, the bigfoot press, social media, and the Democratic Party. Reporter Matt Taibbi has immersed himself in the Twitter Files courtesy of Elon Musk. By my rough count, Taibbi has posted 10 or so of the 15 Twitter Files threads so far. Taibbi has also compiled a summary of each of the threads here at his
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February 13, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Last week the New York Post published Professor Jonathan Turley’s February 10 column “Twitter censorship is the modern-day red scare.” Professor Turley subsequently posted the column on his personal site under the heading “Is the Red Scare Going Blue?” Both his column and his post include useful links. The column briefly followed up the long written statement Professor Turley submitted to the hearing on the weaponization of the federal government
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February 8, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Tomorrow the House of Representatives’ Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government will hold its first hearing, chaired by Jim Jordan. The existence of this committee illustrates the vital difference between a narrow minority and a narrow majority. Under Democratic rule, “weaponization” of federal agencies was applauded, not investigated. The committee’s name refers in part to the Democrats’ deployment of the FBI and CIA as partisan agents. Donald
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February 1, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday CBS News reported that the FBI searched the Penn Biden Center offices in mid-November, according to “two sources familiar with the investigation,” after lawyers for President Biden had found about 10 documents marked classified there on Nov. 2. It is not clear why the White House has not disclosed the search. It is not clear when the search occurred. It is not clear whether additional classified documents were seized.
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January 24, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Charles “Charlie” McGonigal helped originate the FBI’s Russia hoax investigation of President Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign. As the New York Post explains, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Jonathan Moffa told Senate Judiciary Committee staffers in 2020 that he got a July 2016 email from McGonigal which “contained essentially that reporting, which then served as the basis for the opening of the [Crossfire Hurricane] case.” After serving as chief of
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January 20, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Has FBI Director Christopher Wray said word one about the supervisory role played by the FBI with Twitter under the old regime? Not to my knowledge. We have sought to highlight it in our Notes on the Twitter Files. Speaking at the annual World Economic Forum jamboree in Davos yesterday, Wray seemed to allude to the FBI’s supervision of Big Tech: I think the sophistication of the private sector is
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January 13, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday afternoon Matt Taibbi posted a 40-part thread that stands as the fourteenth installment of the Twitter Files. It can be accessed via the first tweet in the thread below. The thread is unrolled here on the Thread Reader app. Taibbi comments on the thread in the related post at his TK News site on Substack in “America Needs Truth and Reconciliation on Russiagate.” 1.THREAD: Twitter Files #14THE RUSSIAGATE LIESOne:
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January 8, 2023 — Scott Johnson
In following the multiple installments of the Twitter Files written by several hands, it is not easy to grasp the big picture. Lee Smith has formulated a sort of unified field theory of social media penetration by the law enforcement and intelligence agencies of the United States. He makes his case in the Tablet column “How the FBI hacked Twitter.” The Twitter Files themselves make for a part of the
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January 4, 2023 — Scott Johnson
In the twelfth of the Twitter Files threads Matt Taibbi documents the central of the FBI. Students of James Joyce’s Ulysses may think of it as the Omphalos Ultimatum. The thread consists of 40 tweets that can be accessed via the first (below). The thread is unrolled here in the Thread Reader app. 1.THREAD: The Twitter FilesTwitter and the FBI “Belly Button” pic.twitter.com/nfOGQGlvUM — Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023
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