Important Takeaways:
- The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has arrested two current U.S. Army soldiers and a former soldier on charges related to the alleged sale of national defense information to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), Jian Zhao and Li Tian—both active-duty soldiers stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord—were taken into custody alongside Ruoyu Duan, a former soldier. Federal grand juries in the District of Oregon and the Western District of Washington handed down indictments, leading to their arrests on Thursday.
- Tian and Duan face charges of bribery and theft of government property. Zhao faces similar charges, in addition to conspiracy to transmit national defense information to unauthorized individuals.
- U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi says the defendants are accused of compromising national security. “The defendants arrested today are accused of betraying our country, actively working to weaken America’s defense capabilities and empowering our adversaries in China,” Bondi said in a statement. “They will face swift, severe, and comprehensive justice.”
- FBI Director Kash Patel also commented on the charges. Writing on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), Patel noted, “These individuals have been charged with stealing America’s defense intelligence capabilities and empowering adversaries like China in betrayal of our country.”
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Important Takeaways:
- FBI Director Kash Patel has launched an investigation into former Director James Comey’s secret “honeypot” operation involving 2 female undercover agents who targeted President Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to The Washington Times.
- Last October it was revealed that according to an FBI whistleblower, former Director James Comey inserted two female agents inside the Trump campaign in 2016.
- The Washington Times reported that the female agents were directed to act as “honeypots” and travel with Trump and his staff.
- This was an “off-the-books” operation and was separate from Comey and Obama’s Crossfire Hurricane operation (launched in July 2016) that targeted Trump based on false Russian collusion lies.
- The whistleblower told Congress last year that the “honeypot” investigation was hidden from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, another Obama-appointed lackey for the regime.
- One of the undercover agents involved in Comey’s operation was transferred to the CIA so she would not be a potential witness.
- The other undercover agent was promoted to a high-ranking position at the FBI
- The details of this investigation were kept from President Trump’s criminal defense attorneys.
- On Tuesday, The Washington Times reported that Kash Patel launched an investigation into Comey’s “honeypot” operation.
- Recall that Kash Patel was former House Intel Chairman Devin Nunes’ top deputy for years and helped blow the Spygate and Russiagate stories wide open.
- Nobody knows the Comey-McCabe-Brennan-Clapper-Spygate scandal better than Kash Patel.
- According to The Washington Times, the FBI is looking for the undercover honeypots.
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Important Takeaways:
- Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent, was named as the FBI’s next deputy director.
- President Trump congratulated Mr. Bongino on Sunday night and described him in a Truth Social post as a man with “incredible love and passion for our country.”
- Bongino, a native of New York’s Queens borough like Mr. Trump, is also a former NYPD police officer and has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology from the City University of New York and a master of business administration degree from Penn State.
- “Great news for Law Enforcement and American Justice! Dan Bongino, a man of incredible love and passion for our Country, has just been named the next deputy director of the FBI, by the man who will be the best ever Director, Kash Patel,” Mr. Trump said.
- “Working with our great new United States Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and Director Patel, Fairness, Justice, Law and Order will be brought back to America, and quickly. Congratulations Dan!” the president wrote.
- Bongino said that his new role is not about politics but about professionalism, leadership and accountability.
- A 12-year veteran of the Secret Service under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Mr. Bongino was previously an NYPD officer between 1995 and 1999.
- Following his time in law enforcement, he launched his political and media career, making unsuccessful bids for Congress in 2012, 2014 and 2016.
- He waded into online media, when he launched the Bongino Report in 2019 as an alternative to the Drudge Report, saying founder Matt Drudge had “abandoned” Mr. Trump’s supporters.
- He later joined Fox News as a contributor and host and became a successful podcast host and radio broadcaster on Cumulus, where he was signed to replace “The Rush Limbaugh Show” on its talk radio stations.
- In 2022, he joined Rumble as a content creator with his podcast after YouTube banned his program after he questioned the effectiveness of masks in stopping the spread of COVID-19.
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Important Takeaways:
- When I decided to write this article, I was feeling quite overwhelmed, because there is just so much going on right now. This is going to be a very long article, and I will take it one step at a time. With all that being said, let’s take a look at some of the highlights…
- [And I, not the author of this article highlighted the highlights so you have to go to the website for more information]
- The U.S. Treasury
- If you want to understand what is really going on in any organization, you need to follow the flow of money.
- So Elon Musk has been wanting access to the U.S. Treasury’s payment system, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent granted him that access on Friday…
- After getting in, Musk discovered that payment approval officers at the U.S. Treasury were simply rubber-stamping all payment requests that were submitted to them…
- Every single year, more than 6 trillion dollars is disbursed through the U.S. Treasury’s payment system…
- In a typical year, over one billion payments are made by the U.S. Treasury, and not a single one was ever being denied.
- OPM
- The Office of Personnel Management is the largest HR department on the entire globe.
- “A team including current and former employees of Musk assumed command of OPM on Jan. 20, the day Trump took office. They have moved sofa beds onto the fifth floor of the agency’s headquarters, which contains the director’s office and can only be accessed with a security badge or a security escort, one of the OPM employees said…. The sofa beds have been installed so the team can work around the clock, the employee said.”
- Aides to Elon Musk charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials.
- … During an internal meeting Friday morning, Trump administration officials directed OPM senior career staff to begin making plans to cut the agency’s workforce and programs by 70%. Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the meeting confirmed the details of the meeting to Federal News Network…
- USAID
- When officials from Musk’s team went over to USAID headquarters, they were physically prevented from entering.
- In response, the representatives from Musk’s team “threatened to call US Marshals to be allowed access”…
- Two top security officials at the US Agency for International Development were put on administrative leave Saturday night after attempting to refuse officials from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency access systems at the agency, even after DOGE personnel threatened to call law enforcement, multiple sources familiar told CNN.
- According to sources, personnel from the Musk-created office physically tried to access the USAID headquarters in Washington, DC, and were stopped. The DOGE personnel demanded to be let in and threatened to call US Marshals to be allowed access, two of the sources said.
- The DOGE personnel wanted to gain access to USAID security systems and personnel files, three sources said. Two of those sources also said the DOGE personnel wanted access to classified information, which only those with security clearances and a specific need to know are able to access.
- If you go to USAID’s website now, you will find that it has been shut down…
- On his Twitter account, Robby Starbuck detailed how this works…
- USAID essentially functions as one of many money laundering machines for Democrats in DC. Here’s how it works:
- Activists create obscure NGO
- Dems fund it lavishly
- NGO does bare minimum (or actively hurts the United States)
- Activists get paid and donate to Dems
- Not only that but USAID helped spread their gender ideology nonsense and brought millions of illegals into our country.
- That’s why Democrats are freaking out about the possibility that USAID’s being shut down by President Trump. It needs to be done.
- The EPA
- It appears that the EPA could soon be getting a lot smaller.
- Last week, over 1,000 EPA employees were notified that “they were deemed to be on probationary status” and could soon be fired…
- …The same message will be sent to other agency workforces, a White House official said. Across the US government, the latest data shows there are more than 220,000 employees on probation.
- The FBI
- Last week, the Washington Post reported that “at least eight senior FBI executives” were being terminated…
- A top Justice Department official on Friday ordered the firing of at least eight senior FBI executives and a sweeping examination of the work of thousands of other bureau employees, including all those who worked on investigations tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post.
- The directive from Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said those field agents and FBI support staff could face “additional personnel action,” suggesting that the number of firings could swell in the coming weeks.
- Ken Dilanian with NBC News reported that a number of the FBI’s “top executives” were told they would be out of a job by Monday. Friday, Dilanian reported a “purge” was underway that could see the heads of up to 20 of the FBI’s 55 field offices relieved.
- Dilanian reported, “The purge is bigger than first understood, we are told, and includes more than 20 heads of FBI field offices, including the ones in Miami and Washington, DC.”
- Vast numbers of federal workers that have been working at home since the pandemic began are going to have to start showing up at the office each day.
- If they choose not to report, they will gladly be given their walking papers…
- President Trump on Wednesday warned that federal workers will have to show up to the office “or be terminated,” framing his administration’s so-called buyout offers to 2 million employees as an effort to shrink the government.
- “We’re requiring them to show up to work or be terminated,” Trump said in remarks from the East Room before signing an immigration bill into law.
- “We think a very substantial number of people will not show up to work, and therefore our government will get smaller and more efficient,” Trump added. “And that’s what we’ve been looking to do for many, many decades, frankly.”
- In the entire history of the United States, we have never seen anything quite like this, and there is widespread panic among federal employees right now…
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Important Takeaways:
- FBI employees were terminated or forced to quit Thursday within hours of FBI Director Nominee Kash Patel’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
- At least 20 executive assistant directors, assistant directors and special agents in charge from throughout the U.S. were forced out of the agency, according to sources.
- Several officials had already boxed up their offices before they were officially notified of their termination.
- The FBI declined to comment on the terminations.
- After Thursday’s hearing, Mr. Patel, despite clashing with the Senate’s Democratic minority, appeared on a glide path to confirmation.
- Patel, who has served in high-level adviser positions related to national security, said at his confirmation hearing that he planned to stop the “weaponization” of the FBI.
- “There will be no politicization of the FBI. There will be no retributive actions,” he told senators.
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- Outgoing FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed during an interview on Sunday, a week before he steps down, that China has penetrated America’s water treatment plants, electric grid, and other critical civilian infrastructure, and is lying “in wait” for an opportunity to cyberattack at a time and place of its choosing.
- Asked on CBS’s 60 Minutes about Chinese penetration of U.S. cyber and infrastructure, Wray said China’s cyber program is the largest in the world and has stolen more of Americans’ personal and corporate data than every nation combined. Then, he added:
- But even beyond the cyber theft. There’s another part of the Chinese cyber threat that I think has not gotten the attention publicly that it I think desperately deserves. And that is Chinese government’s pre-positioning on American civilian critical infrastructure. To lie in wait on those networks to be in a position to wreak havoc and can inflict real-world harm at a time and place of their choosing.
- Wray said China has already infiltrated malware into critical American infrastructure.
- “Things like water treatment plants. We’re talking about transportation systems. We’re talking about targeting of our energy sector, the electric grid, natural gas pipelines. And recently we’ve seen targeting of our telecommunications systems,” he said.
- Wray said China has also been listening into Americans’ calls.
- Joshua Steinman, former National Security Council senior director for cyber security during the Trump administration, posted on X:
- This enrages me. I left them with the tools they needed to confront this. And it appears those tools went unused for four years. Total mismanagement.
- Wray called stepping down “one of the hardest decisions” he has ever made, but said he had little choice after President-Elect Donald Trump made it clear he would be replaced.
- Trump has nominated Kash Patel, former deputy Director of National Intelligence and Pentagon chief of staff for the role.
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- The FBI seized more than 150 homemade explosives from a Virginia man’s home, ABC News reported on Wednesday.
- Federal investigators made this discovery in December while searching the home of Norfolk, Virginia, resident Brad Spafford.
- According to court documents, it is believed to be “the largest seizure by number of finished explosive devices in FBI history,” ABC News reported.
- The court documents added that most of the bombs, material for building explosives, and tools were found in a garage next to Spafford’s home.
- “Several additional apparent pipe bombs were found in a backpack in the home’s bedroom, completely unsecured,” said prosecutors.
- Spafford’s defense attorneys argued in a motion Tuesday that he never planned anything violent.
- The prosecution responded, “While he is not known to have engaged in any apparent violence, he has certainly expressed interest in the same, through his manufacture of pipe bombs marked ‘lethal,’ his possession of riot gear and a vest loaded with pipe bombs, his support for political assassinations and use of the pictures of the President for target practice,” ABC News reported.
- According to the court documents, “this investigation began in early 2023 when the defendant’s neighbor and friend reported that the defendant disfigured his hand in 2021 while working with a homemade explosive device and was stockpiling weapons and homemade ammunition.”
Read the original article by clicking here.
Important Takeaways:
- More than any other personnel decision former President Donald Trump, the president-elect now, has made for his incoming administration, his decision to pick attorney Kash Patel to lead the FBI as the bureau’s next director has electrified Trump’s most ardent supporters.
- The raw energy with this selection may be because Patel is viewed as one of the movement’s most aggressive fighters–he was critical in the effort to undercut in Trump’s first term the Russia hoax against the then-president and then later led counterterrorism efforts in the White House–but it’s perhaps even more because of the distrust American conservatives have in the FBI over the past several years that finding someone who just will not appease the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency’s bad actors and will aim to steer the bureau back towards actually enforcing the law and away from political witch hunting.
- Senators may disagree with Patel on one thing or another, but they cannot legitimately argue that the person who led counterterrorism activities for the Trump White House including overseeing the raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, serving as a senior adviser to the Director of National Intelligence, as chief of staff at the Pentagon, and as a top attorney for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), as well as a long and illustrious career both as a prosecutor and as a public defender, is not qualified for the job. So see, this move by Trump puts these forces that his base has long distrusted and sought to counter in check–if not checkmate–and that’s why his base is so excited.
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Important Takeaways:
- CIA official Asif William Rahman was arrested by the FBI in Cambodia on Tuesday and charged with disclosing classified documents allegedly showing Israel’s retaliation plans against Iran, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. He was brought to a federal court in Guam to face charges.
- Rahman was indicted by a US federal court in Virginia with charges of willful retention and transmission of national defense information, the report said.
- According to the New York Times, the documents were prepared by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes US spy satellite information and photos.
- While both the US Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the leaked documents, they did not deny their authenticity.
- The leak occurred on Friday when the Middle East Spectator Telegram channel claimed it had received documents about Israel’s strike preparations from a source within the US intelligence community. This Telegram channel is known for publishing pro-Iranian propaganda, and its associated Twitter account states that its operators are based in Iran.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Justice Department, FBI, and IRS all knew the infamous Hunter Biden laptop “was real” immediately after it came to light and prosecutors told investigators not to ask questions about Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election, according to two whistleblowers.
- IRS employees Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, both who previously testified before Congress, spoke to investigative reporter Catherine Herridge in their first interview since Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to federal tax charges to avoid facing another criminal trial months after being convicted in a separate gun case.
- The infamous “laptop from hell” was originally abandoned by first son Hunter Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop before being retrieved and authenticated by the FBI.
- In October 2020, the New York Post first reported the abandoned laptop included of influence-peddling, drug use, and other lurid activity.
- Government officials, social media companies, and the mainstream media refused to acknowledge the authenticity of the laptop, instead saying it was part of a Russian disinformation effort.
- In July 2023, the FBI’s section chief of the Foreign Influence Task Force testified before a House panel that the bureau knew the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden in the run-up to the 2020 election.
- Shapley and Ziegler told Herridge federal investigators faced “a lot of overt investigative steps that we were not allowed to take because we had an upcoming election.”
- They also told the reporter:
- “The prosecutors … told us that they didn’t want to ask about ‘The Big Guy.'”
- “We corroborated that ‘The Big Guy’ was Joe Biden. Yes.”
- “There was no question ever that ‘The Big Guy’ was referring to Joe Biden.”
- “It was for the purpose of affecting that [2020] election.”
- The two whistleblowers alleged there is disparate treatment of taxpayers by the IRS and a double standard at the Justice Department for the handling of presidential campaigns.
- Herridge also reported that an internal IRS email shows the whistleblowers’ supervisor celebrated the Hunter Biden guilty plea, calling it a “great conviction” even though the whistleblower say they have been punished for coming forward by superiors.
- “Those are words that are not supported by the actions of the agency,” Herridge was told.
- “This to me was someone who knows that [an] IRS watchdog right now is looking into the way that they’ve handled this and they see the writing on the wall, and this really is an example of just covering their backside like a true bureaucracy.”
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