Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

The math demands it!

The house always wins.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Shock troops for the Unitarian Jihad.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Trump is going to draw a dick on that dog with a sharpie, isn’t he?

… down to kool-aid drinkers and next of kin at the trump White House

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn – Nancy Pelosi

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Gastritis broke my calculator.

I’m only here for the duck photos.

Reality always wins in the end.

Screw the Judean People’s Front. Splitters.

Let there be snark.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot.

I’m going back to the respite thread.

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

You are here: Home / Archives for Adam L Silverman

Adam L. Silverman is a consulting national security subject matter expert specializing in low intensity warfare (asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare, revolution, insurgency, terrorism), civil affairs, psychological operations, and cultural considerations for strategy and policy.

He routinely provides operational support to a number of US Army, DOD, and other US Government elements. Dr. Silverman holds a doctorate in political science and criminology from the University of Florida, as well as masters' degrees in comparative religion and international security. Full professional bio available here: https://www.balloon-juice.com/adam-silverman-bio/

Adam Silverman has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2015.

Post Debate Open Thread: Good News Everybody, We Never Have To See or Hear the President Debate Ever Again!!!!

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Thank someone’s, anyone’s Deity or Deities, or if you’re an atheist, no one’s Deity or Deities, that that is over!!!

And now for your post debate enjoyment, I give you the most specialist operator to ever operate operationally!!!!

Here’s the full pic:

Post Debate Open Thread: Good News Everybody, We Never Have To See or Hear the President Debate Ever Again!!!!

This must be the world’s most dangerous Subway! Honestly, I used to go to the Subway on FOB Hammer, which is where my Brigade Combat Team was based out of in Iraq, a couple of times a week and get a sub. Sure, we were on the forward operating base, so inside the wire, but it was still a Subway in a war zone during a war albeit one that was in the Phase IV conventional/Phase VII unconventional phase of war, so post major combat operations. I don’t remember ever having more than my M9 (Beretta 92) and two extra magazines with me. Most of the time my sidearm staid in the armory and I checked it out for when I was operating off the FOB, which was about 50 to 60 percent of my deployed time. And even then, depending on what type of Engagements I was doing, I left my sidearm in the armory rather than carry it because of what not carrying it conveyed to the Iraqis I was interacting with.

The specialist operator to ever operate operationally here, however, is just WOW!!!!

This guy is carrying 4 full size SIG P320s, though the desert tan ones in the drop holsters appear to be an attempt to make it look like he’s carrying the military version, which is known as the M17.

He’s got two fill size mags in the black P320s, so that’s 17 rounds in each. 18 in each if he’s got one in the chamber in each gun. It looks like he’s got the 21 round extended mags for the desert tan ones. Let’s stipulate he’s got one in the pipe in all four guns. So that’s 80 rounds in the guns and he’s got two more full size and two more extended mags in the mag carriers in the small of his back. That’s 72 more rounds. Provided he doesn’t have more rounds or even more guns around front set up for cross draw or appendix carry or in his pockets, he’s got 152 rounds to get a $5 footlong!

Each of this pistols, brand new, out the door, is between $440 to $650 depending on what he’s actually bought. They all look to be the X grip configuration, so those are bit more expensive. The spare mags are $49.99 apiece. At the going rate of ammunition, if you can even find it right now, provided he’s got quality self defense ammo in the guns and the back up magazines, he’s got between $152 (Speer Gold Dots) to $228 (Federal HST) worth of ammunition on his waist and hips. Throw in another $200 to $250 for the drop holsters, the belt holsters, the gun belt, and the magazine carriers. So he’s spent between $3,000 and $4,000 to feel safe getting a $5 sandwich!

Personally I’d just go to a sandwich shop in a better neighborhood. Like Iraq.

Open thread!

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The DNI/FBI Announcement On Election Interference: Before Anyone Asks, I Really Have No Idea

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Not that I don’t appreciate getting texts and emails asking me about breaking news… So let me just start with: I have no idea.

I watched the press conference, I’ve read The Washington Post‘s reporting on this, and I’m basically like, (except with much more facial hair):

The DNI/FBI Announcement On Election Interference: Before Anyone Asks, I Really Have No Idea

The Washington Post provides us what I think are the important details:

The technical data embedded in the emails did not make immediately apparent who was behind the messages. But metadata gathered from dozens of the emails pointed to the use of servers in Saudi Arabia, Estonia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, according to numerous analysts.

The hosting service that previously carried the Proud Boys domain canceled the registration after Google Cloud notified the customer that a nonprofit group had raised concerns about the controversial organization, said Ladd, the Google Cloud spokesman.

Following the action from the hosting service, the domain appears to have been left unsecured, allowing anyone on the Internet to take control of it and use it to send out the menacing messages, said Trevor Davis, CEO of CounterAction, a Washington-based digital intelligence firm.

I have no idea what other, corroborating information that the CIA, NSA, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA, which is part of DHS), National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NSCS, which is part of ODNI), and the National Security Division at the FBI have, but this doesn’t scream Iran to me. Could it be Iran? Sure. Can I say it is or isn’t definitively based on what I know about how Iran behaves after working on issues dealing with Iran for the Army and DOD for over a decade? I can’t. With this information I could just as easily make an argument that this is an Emirati Crown Price Mohammad bin Zayed and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman effort intended to make Iran look bad, which is a fair amount of the attempted covert and clandestine efforts made by the Emiratis and the Saudis. The whole point of the recent agreements between Israel and the UAE, Israel and Bahrain*, and attempt to get agreements between Israel and Saudi Arabia are really attempts to formalize and make overt the decades long covert and clandestine relations that these states have had with Israel in order to establish an anti-Iranian regional alliance.

Part of the problem here is that DNI Ratcliffe has no credibility. Especially as I’m not sure anyone who isn’t a partisan would classify emails like the one below as being anti-Trump.

The DNI/FBI Announcement On Election Interference: Before Anyone Asks, I Really Have No Idea 2

My read of the email above is an attempt to deactivate Biden voters through intimidation. And based on what was said, I’m not even sure these were the emails that DNI Ratcliffe was referring to.

This leads to my other concern here, especially given what Ratcliffe said and what FBI Director Wray did not. DNI Ratcliffe stated that the intelligence points to Iran and Russia, and that in the case of Iran he generically referenced intimidatory emails and then specifically stated that these Iranian efforts are intended to harm the President’s reelection chances. He provided no details regarding whatever Russia is doing. Director Wray said nothing specific at all; he just provided a general warning that both Iran and Russia are actively trying to disrupt the election and that the US government has thwarted one such attempt.

DNI Ratcliffe is both highly partisan and highly unqualified for the position he is currently serving in. My worry is that by making the statements that he did, and rushing to do them tonight before 8 PM EDT, he has provided the President with talking points for his rally tonight. Something the President can pitch to the rally goers as “Did you hear what Director of National Intelligence Ratcliffe – great man, great man – said earlier tonight? He said the Iranians are interfering in the election to get Sleepy Joe elected. Can you believe that? Can you? It’s true, it’s true!”

Frankly what was presented by DNI Ratcliffe was very thin and very concerning because it was very thin. The more generic statements of Director Wray was better largely because he didn’t provide just enough details to make people question the integrity of what was being briefed.

I want to make one final point. What Director Wray told Americans tonight was what should have been announced back in August, September, and/or October 2016 in regard to what Russia was doing in 2016. The Obama administration wanted to do it, but decided it also wanted bipartisan buy-in, so the President pitched it to both the Democratic and Republican leadership in Congress. Senator McConnell killed it by threatening to use any announcement, no matter how appropriate and how non-partisan, as a weapon to politically attack both President Obama and Secretary Clinton. My issues and concerns here are not that a press conference to warm Americans about foreign election interference was done. My issues and concerns of the lack of specificity except in regard to one statement from DNI Ratcliffe that the interference was intended to harm the President and his reelection chances and the need to do this tonight before 8 PM when there’s nothing that couldn’t have waited till 9 AM tomorrow morning.

We are off the looking glass and through the map!

Open thread!

* Just earlier today we learned that Israel has been running a clandestine embassy in Bahrain that was being presented as a development corporation. This reporting raises the questions of 1) how many other Gulf States has Israel done this in, 2) how many US companies, defense or non-defense sector, have been compromised by doing business with companies that are secret Israeli embassies that only Israel and the host country know are fronts, and 3) how much US intellectual property, especially critical for US national security, wound up being stolen as a result?

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Betty Cracker Asks, We Answer! Hunter Biden’s Phone Being Hacked Is the Most Likely Pathway For the Information Giuliani Is Peddling

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BettyC asked this very good question this afternoon:

One thing in this tawdry tale I’m truly curious about is the origin of that laptop. From what I’ve been able to piece together, it sounds like the FBI really did take possession of a hard drive?

But the MAGA computer store guy’s story isn’t believable. If Russian agents and/or some of Giuliani’s other shady minions planted stuff on a laptop that didn’t belong to H. Biden and contrived this whole tale, I think a forensic investigation would reveal that, but I don’t really know how all of this works…

I think the simple answer is that Hunter Biden’s cellphone was hacked. And it really wouldn’t matter if it was an iPhone or some other type of smart phone. Let me unpack this a bit, but before I do I want to make one very specific point. The tradecraft here, the actual details of how this operation, for lack of a better term, has been conducted, does not negate the fact that the disinformation, misinformation, and agitprop that Giuliani is pushing is the creation of Russian intelligence and that he has been pushing it for almost a year now while working with active Russian intelligence assets as part of Russia’s ongoing political war against the United States.

Let’s stipulate, as I explained in a comment reply earlier today, that:

the structure, if you will, of this type of operation is to hack for actual documents and photos and video and audio files, remove them, doctor some, fabricate others completely, and then dump them all together. This makes it impossible for someone, especially if they didn’t realize they were hacked, to assert that they are all forgeries. Because the forgeries and doctored materials are shuffled in with the legit materials. This was attempted by the Russians against Macron in 2017. This was also done against AG Lynch in 2016, which led to Comey being stupid in the most Comey way ever.

I would add that it is also why it becomes impossible to state that the materials being released are all fakes, because there are some outright fakes, some modified and partial fakes, and some actual real materials all bundled together. And remember, neither Giuliani nor The NY Post has provided anything that isn’t a pdf or a screen grab, so there’s no actual real metadata for you techie types reading this to analyze.

Hacking Hunter Biden’s smartphone – iPhone, Samsung, or what have you aside – as a way to access all this information would not be surprising. The NSO Group developed a smartphone hacking program named Pegasus, which has been sold/licensed to the United Arab Emirates, allegedly in partnership with the Saudis. There are concerns that it was the Pegasus software that was used to gain access to material on Jeff Bezos’s phone, which was then conveniently laundered through the disgruntled and MAGA manic brother of the woman Bezos was having an affair with. The NSO Group is currently under Federal investigation. While the NSO Group is technically now owned by a US investment firm, it is headquartered in Herziliya, Israel, which is also where the Israeli security and intel firm Black Cube is headquartered. Black Cube has done work for NSO Group in an attempt to disrupt, through private intelligence operations, researchers trying to prove that NSO’s Pegasus software was used to target dissidents. Black Cube is the firm responsible for targeting former Obama administration senior national security officials Ben Rhodes and Colin Kahl. NSO has also impersonated Facebook to spread their spyware. Pegasus and NSO’s other tools are very, very, very effective. Bezos had to hire one of the top names in personal security services to actually figure out what had happened.

If whomever managed to hack and exfiltrate the data from Hunter Biden, and my professional guesstimate is it was from his smartphone, they would have been able to get access to all of his emails and text messages through the email and text message clients on the phone, as well as pictures, audio, and/or video that were stored on the phone. If it was an iPhone and he had Safari set up to share history and bookmarks across devices, then they would also have access to his entire search history. Once whomever did the hack had all that information, then select items would be altered, other items would be completely fabricated, and then all of them together – the real, the altered, and the completely fabricated – would be bundled together, placed on one or more devices, in this case one or more old MacBooks and/or the external hard drive, and then given to someone to discover this treasure trove and feed it to someone like Giuliani who would then launder it through something approaching a legitimate news source.

Here’s the screen grab of the computer store receipt that Giuliani provided to the New York Post:

Betty Cracker Asks, We Answer! Hunter Biden's Phone Being Hacked Is the Most Likely Pathway For the Information Giuliani Is Peddling

There are a couple of things that have my antenna up on this receipt. The first is the date, April 2019. By all reports Hunter Biden was living in Los Angeles throughout 2019 having moved to LA after his divorce in 2018. Is it possible that Hunter Biden went home to visit his father and step-mother in Delaware in April 2019, brought one or more broken, water damaged MacBooks and possibly a brand new external hard drive with him, and decided to take it to a strip mall computer repair place instead of driving 20 minutes to the Apple Store in Newark, DE? It’s possible. Is it possible he did all that rather than take it in for repair in LA? This too is possible. But neither make a lot of geospatial, let alone logical sense. Especially as Hunter Biden had to go to Arkansas in April 2019 to produce a DNA sample pursuant to a court order in a paternity case. The next thing that bothers me is that signature. I spent about an hour yesterday looking for any image of a document with Hunter Biden’s signature and I could not find one. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one on the Internet somewhere, but I couldn’t find one to compare that scribble against. Is it possible that that is Hunter Biden’s signature? Sure it’s possible, but that could be anything. The cell phone number and iCloud email address that supposedly belong to Hunter Biden are in the upper left corner of that receipt. Both of those pieces of information would be available for extraction and to be used to generate a bogus receipt if his smartphone had been hacked.

This is my semi-informed professional estimate/guesstimate, but given the people involved in this insanity – Giuliani and Bannon and Col Allan at the NY Post – using a highly sophisticated phone hacking program like Pegasus to exfiltrate all the information possible from Hunter Biden’s smartphone, then modifying some documents and images and video and fabricating others, dumping them on to a different device and then leaving them all with a credulous individual to be discovered makes both logical sense and sense in terms of how we’ve seen subversion tradecraft change as the technology finally caught up to the concepts and doctrine for undertaking this type of operation. And this leads me to concerns about any alleged video that Rudy plans to leak out. Deep fake technology has increased by leaps and bounds over the past four years. Either modifying existing video that Hunter Biden might have had on his smartphone or modifying video of someone else to look like Hunter Biden can be done with better results in 2020 than they could have been done in 2016. Would a deep fake hold up to proper analysis? Probably not, but it wouldn’t have to. It just has to make it through a news cycle or two on Fox News, Breitbart, The New York Post‘s website, the Epoch Times’ website, The Daily Caller, The Daily Signal, The Gateway Pundit, etc. Especially as none of those outlets will print a correction or retraction if a deep fake modified video is debunked.

I want to make one final point and it is a human/humane one. One of the things that isn’t being remarked on is that Hunter Biden was three years old when he, his brother, his baby sister, and his mother were in the car accident that killed his mother and baby sister. While everyone remembers the picture of four year old Beau Biden in his hospital bed with a broken leg being suspended on a pulley, Hunter Biden was also injured. He had a skull fracture. I’m not a medical doctor, I’ve got a PhD, but I’d be willing to wager good money that both Biden boys were given significant pain killers as needed/required during their stays in the hospital. Anyone care to guess the effect that the pain killers that would have been used in the early 1970s would have had on the developing neurotransmitters and receptors of a three year old? Hunter Biden has an addiction. I’m not sure that over 45 years later anyone can definitely say if whatever he was treated with for pain after the accident predisposed him to drug addiction, a preexisting condition if you will, but it really doesn’t or shouldn’t matter. We all know people in our personal lives, as well as online lives, who have addiction problems. It doesn’t matter if they’re for things that are deemed legal, such as food addictions or addictions to alcohol or even gambling, let alone for controlled substances – addiction is a disease. There is a real scandal here and that scandal is that the President, his sons and daughter in law, Giuliani, Bannon, his other surrogates, the Fox News evening talking heads, the chuckleheads at Breitbart, etc have such a basic lack of humanity and are so obsessed with obtaining power or being near those that do, that they’ve decided to exploit someone’s battle with addiction in the hope of increasing the President’s electoral outcomes by a couple of percent. This is both the real scandal and the real tragedy of this entire sordid story. This isn’t just traumatizing Hunter Biden and likely pushing all of his triggers for addictive behavior*, it is doing the same thing for a lot of other people who struggle with addictions. It isn’t just as Adam Serwer says that cruelty is the point. Cruelty is also the ways and the means too!

Open thread!

* I would not be surprised, given Giuliani’s deranged rantings on his and Bannon’s YouTube channel, as well as Fox News, if we ultimately find out that Giuliani is doing this to try to trigger Hunter Biden into relapsing in the hope of a news media feeding frenzy that the Democratic nominee’s son was caught smoking crack just weeks before the election.

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I’d Like To Introduce Ryan Grim and Glenn Greenwald To Reporting At a Publication Called The Intercept

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Glenn Greenwald, co-founder of The Intercept, and Ryan Grim, the DC Bureau Chief of The Intercept, both had thoughts over the weekend over the recent Giuliani and Bannon pushed misinformation and agitprop campaign against VP Biden.

From Robert Mackey’s reporting in The Intercept from May 10, 2019 (emphasis mine):

VIRAL RUMORS THAT Joe Biden abused his power as vice president to protect his son’s business interests in Ukraine in 2016, which spread last week from the pro-Trump media ecosystem to the New York Times, are “absolute nonsense,” according to Ukraine’s leading anti-corruption activist. That evaluation is backed by foreign correspondents in Kiev and a former official with knowledge of Biden’s outreach to Ukraine after President Viktor Yanukovych was deposed in a popular uprising in 2014.

The accusation is that Biden blackmailed Ukraine’s new leaders into firing the country’s chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to derail an investigation he was leading into a Ukrainian gas company that the vice president’s son, Hunter, was paid to advise.

The truth, Kaleniuk said, is that Shokin was forced from office at Biden’s urging because he had failed to conduct thorough investigations of corruption, and had stifled efforts to investigate embezzlement and misconduct by public officials following the 2014 uprising.

Properly debunking this particular conspiracy theory is easier said than done, though, since it is set in Ukraine, a country with byzantine political intrigue at the best of times, and these are not the best of times. The rivalries between political factions in Kyiv are so intense that even the country’s new anti-corruption agencies are at each other’s throats.

There is no question that Biden did, during a visit to Kyiv in late 2015, threaten to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees unless Shokin was dismissed. But the vice president, who was leading the Obama administration’s effort to fight corruption in Ukraine, did the country a favor by hastening Shokin’s departure, Kaleniuk said, since he had failed to properly investigate corrupt officials.

“Shokin was fired because he attacked the reformers within the prosecutor general’s office,” Kaleniuk said, “reformers who tried to investigate corrupt prosecutors.”

Before it reached the Times, the frenzied speculation about Biden, and the supposed meddling in the 2016 election by anti-corruption prosecutors in Ukraine, was regularly featured on a network of far-right websites that work to boost Trump and undermine Democrats. Among the first outlets to promote the idea of the Ukrainians as the real meddlers was Sputnik, a Russian state-owned news agency. That theme, and related conspiracy theories about Ukraine and Democrats, were then featured in a series of opinion columns by John Solomon, a columnist for The Hill in Washington. Solomon’s stories, based on interviews with disgruntled, far-right Ukrainian officials who had previously been featured in Sputnik, have been enthusiastically embraced by the conspiracy theorist-in-chief.

Much more at the link, as well as at this subsequent reporting by Mackey in The Intercept.

We know that all of the Hunter Biden was doing illegal things in Ukraine, and elsewhere by leveraging his father the Vice President misinformation and agitprop was first seeded in RIA Novosti in May 2014. It was an early attempt to dirty up VP Biden, as well as Secretary Kerry and VP Cheney by suggesting their children were engaged in illegal activities in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states in case any or all three of them ran for president in 2016. Once again, here’s the screen grab with the link to where I found it.

I'd Like To Introduce Ryan Grim and Glenn Greenwald To Reporting At a Publication Called The Intercept

It was also an attempt to throw as much garbage out there to make it difficult for anyone who was not a Ukraine and Russia expert to cover what had been going on with the Maidan Movement, the backlash against Russian interference in Ukraine, and Russia’s response of both scarfing up Crimea through a manipulated and unreliable plebiscite and invading eastern Ukraine as part of an unconventional warfare campaign that leverages Russian special operations, Russian backed private military companies (Wagner Group), and Russian speaking/ethnic Russian Ukrainians living in Donbass and other eastern Ukrainians. I was involved with working on this problem set from January through May 2014 when I was assigned, under temporary assigned control, as the Cultural Advisor to the Commanding General of US Army Europe. This included doing an assessment and report for the Commanding General of US Army Europe on the Maidan Movement, Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs and the effects of their activities on the politics and economy of Ukraine, and Putin’s intentions for Ukraine.

Perhaps Mr. Greenwald and Mr. Grim should read the reporting in a publication called The Intercept.

Open thread!

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The Presidency of the United States Has Been Penetrated By Russian Intelligence: The US Intelligence Community Determined That Rudy Giuliani Was the Target of Russian Intelligence To Use Him To Influence The President & the President Was Informed of That Finding In December 2019!

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Rudy Giuliani: a noun, a verb, a useless idiot!

At 7:15 PM tonight, The Washington Post reported (emphasis mine):

U.S. intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence, according to four former officials familiar with the matter.

The warnings were based on multiple sources, including intercepted communications, that showed Giuliani was interacting with people tied to Russian intelligence during a December 2019 trip to Ukraine, where he was gathering information that he thought would expose corrupt acts by former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

The intelligence raised concerns that Giuliani was being used to feed Russian misinformation to the president, the former officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information and conversations.

The warnings to the White House, which have not been previously reported, led national security adviser Robert O’Brien to caution Trump in a private conversation that any information Giuliani brought back from Ukraine should be considered contaminated by Russia, one of the former officials said.

The message was, “Do what you want to do, but your friend Rudy has been worked by Russian assets in Ukraine,” this person said. Officials wanted “to protect the president from coming out and saying something stupid,” particularly since he was facing impeachment over his own efforts to strong-arm Ukraine’s president into investigating the Bidens.

But O’Brien emerged from the meeting uncertain whether he had gotten through to the president. Trump had “shrugged his shoulders” at O’Brien’s warning, the former official said, and dismissed concern about his lawyer’s activities by saying, “That’s Rudy.”

Giuliani visited the White House on Dec. 13, shortly after the House Judiciary Committee voted to proceed with articles of impeachment, and he met with Trump at the president’s resort in Florida eight days later.

Officials’ warnings about Giuliani underscore the concern in the U.S. intelligence community that Russia not only is seeking to reprise the disinformation campaign it waged in 2016, but also may now be aided, unwittingly or otherwise, by individuals close to the president. Those warnings have gained fresh urgency in recent days. The information that Giuliani sought in Ukraine is similar to what is contained in emails and other correspondence published this week by the New York Post, which the paper said came from the laptop of Hunter Biden and were provided by Giuliani and Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former top political adviser at the White House.

The Washington Post was unable to verify the authenticity of the alleged communications, which concern Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China.

The former officials said Giuliani was not a target of U.S. surveillance while in Ukraine but was dealing with suspected Russian assets who were, leading to the capture of some of his communications.

Much more at the link!

I’ve been waiting to post on Giuliani’s latest disinformation and agitprop attempt because it was clear something else was going to break. As I tracked the reporting and looked at the materials, I thought it was simply going to be the shifting stories by both the computer repair store owner and Giuliani. Such as Rudy producing paperwork earlier today with Hunter Biden’s signature indicating that if the laptop or laptops were not picked up within 90 days, then they were forfeit to the repair store because he realized the initial story of how he came into possession of the laptops, laptop, and/or hard drive implicated the computer repair story owner and Giuliani in a number of potential crimes.

Or that Rudy was shopping pdfs with metadata indicating that they were created in September and October 2019 months after the laptop or laptops or hard drive were dropped off for repair, not actual emails with the email metadata, but pdfs of emails that he was promoting in October 2019 that have the same disinformation and agitprop just like he supposedly recovered from the abandoned laptop, laptops, and/or hard drives.

Or the fact that they can’t keep the story straight on it being three laptops or a laptop and a hard drive.

Or maybe that someone fed the chan/reddit boards several days ago that this story was coming and did so to signal to the white supremacists and neo-NAZIs by including “88”* in the nym the person was using.

It has been clear for a long time that Rudy was being used by Russian intelligence officers and assets. I’ve written an entire series of posts delineating this in excruciating details over the past year. But what we did not know, though it was a logical suspicion to have, that the US Intelligence Community had signals intelligence (SIGINT) from communications intercepts of Russian assets that clearly indicated this unfortunate reality. We also did not know that they had done their jobs and pushed their assessment up the chain to the Assistant to the President for National Security (AP-NSA) O’Brien, that O’Brien had briefed the President, and that the President blew him off!

We also did not know that the US Intelligence Community had assessed, had briefed up the chain to O’Brien, and that O’Brien then briefed the President to warn him off of Giuliani and the disinformation and agitprop Rudy was pushing as the centerpiece of the President’s defense in his impeachment trial in the Senate! This was, of course part of the plan to turn both chambers of the US Congress into an information laundry for the Russian disinformation and agitprop Rudy was being used to promote, which was then repeated during the hearings Senators Johnson and Grassley held this past August and September.

Giuliani is the poster child for MICE: Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego. Giuliani has been caught on voicemails by reporters, voicemails that resulted from butt dialing on one phone while talking on another because he’s an OPSEC and INFOSEC disaster, seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs for providing various undisclosed services for Deity knows whom. So that checks the Money box. His enormous self regard and desire to be relevant and in the spotlight and important is legendary and checks the Ego box. And these together, combined with his terrible Operational Security and Information Security practices make him a collection target for anyone and everyone trying to collect information on the President, check the Compromise box. Given his well documented infidelities, it would not surprise me at all to find out that there is other compromising material on him out there. No one should be shocked to have their suspicions about Giuliani formally confirmed by the US Intelligence Community.

The result of Giuliani’s stupidity and gullibility and outsized belief that he’s some sort of genius high speed, low drag intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement operator is that he has compromised the President of the United States. He has allowed the Russians to penetrate, via a human asset close to the President, the presidency of the United States. During World War II, the USSR was able to penetrate the presidency of the United States by getting people close to FDR – Harry Dexter White, an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and confidant of FDR’s and Laughlin Currie, a friend and legal advisor to FDR – to steal national secrets and pass them along. Their successor agencies in today’s Russia have found their modern Laughlin Currie in Rudy Giuliani, a friend and legal advisor to the current President of the United States.

We are off the looking glass and through the map!

Updated at 9:35 PM EDT

That didn’t take long and it is exactly what I expected was going to happen. Rudy has finally gotten himself into some serious trouble!

Open thread!

* 88 is widely used by white supremacists and neo-NAZIs as code for Heil Hitler as H is the 8th letter of the alphabet. So 88 is HH is Heil Hitler.

The Presidency of the United States Has Been Penetrated By Russian Intelligence: The US Intelligence Community Determined That Rudy Giuliani Was the Target of Russian Intelligence To Use Him To Influence The President & the President Was Informed of That Finding In December 2019!Post + Comments (198)

It Is the Official Policy of the United States That What the Current President Says Is Not The Official Policy of the United States

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Wait, what?

About a week ago the President tweeted out a broad and sweeping declassification order as part of his own active measures and influence campaign to swing the 2020 election by claiming that President Obama, Vice President Biden, FBI Director Comey, DCI Brennan, DNI Clapper, AP-NSA Rice all working in conjunction with Secretary Clinton and her campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the government of Ukraine conspired to undermine the President’s election by fabricating that Russia was actively trying to assist his campaign in 2016, that he and his campaign were actively trying to recruit Russia to help them, and to cover up the real conspiracy between Secretary Clinton and the Ukrainians. As I’ve written about before, this is all Russian disinformation and agitprop.

It Is the Official Policy of the United States That What the Current President Says Is Not The Official Policy of the United States

This Russian misinformation and agitprop was most recently laundered by DNI Ratcliffe to and through Senators Johnson and Grassley in his selective declassification and release of former DCI Brennan’s memos.

A number of reporters who have been seeking to have redacted and/or classified materials from the various Russia-Trump campaign 2016 investigations released through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) immediately filed emergency requests in Federal court to have all of this now seemingly declassified material released right away. Today the Department of Justice submitted their response:

Or a day ending in day.

We are off the looking glass and through the map!

Open thread!

It Is the Official Policy of the United States That What the Current President Says Is Not The Official Policy of the United StatesPost + Comments (185)

The Former Special Operations Bubbas Sought To Provide Private Security in Minneapolis On Election Day Are Going To Be Breaking All Sorts of Laws

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The Washington Post is reporting that:

A private security company is recruiting former U.S. military Special Operations personnel to guard polling sites in Minnesota on Election Day, an effort the chairman of the company said is intended to prevent left-wing activists from disrupting the election but that the state attorney general warned would amount to voter intimidation and violate the law.

The recruiting effort is being done by Atlas Aegis, a private security company based in Tennessee that was formed last year and is run by U.S. military veterans, including people with Special Operations experience, according to its website.

The company chairman, Anthony Caudle, posted a message through a defense industry jobs site this week calling for former Special Operations forces to staff “security positions in Minnesota during the November Election and beyond to protect election polls, local businesses and residences from looting and destruction.” He said in an interview earlier this week he is planning to send a “large contingent” to Minnesota but did not specify the numbers.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) said in a statement Friday that he joined election officials in “strongly discouraging this unnecessary interference in Minnesota’s elections, which we have not asked for and do not welcome.”

“Federal law and state law are both clear: No one may interfere with or intimidate a voter at a polling place,” he said. “The presence of armed outside contractors at polling places would constitute intimidation and violate the law. I request this company cease and desist any planning and stop making any statements about engaging in this activity.”

Ellison added that “we don’t expect to have to enforce our laws against voter intimidation, but we will use every resource available to us and all the power of the law if we have to.”

Caudle did not respond to a request for comment Friday on Ellison’s statement.

Much more at the link.

I just checked out Atlas Aegis’s “Our Team” page, their Chairman, Anthony Caudle is not part of the Special Operations community. He was in the 1st Battalion/509th Airborne Infantry Regiment, which serves as the Opposing Force personnel at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk. It is not attached to or part of the 82nd Airborne Division, which is garrisoned at Ft. Bragg. 1st Battalion/509th ABN INF is not an operational unit or element it is a training unit/element. Moreover, he indicates he was in their Headquarters and Headquarters Command Company, which means he was part of a group of Soldiers responsible for paperwork, bunks, showers, equipment, and meals. Is he Airborne? Yes. Does his bio indicate any operational deployments as an Airborne Soldier? No, not it does not.

Of the remaining four members of the team one is a Green Beret, one served in both the Ranger Regiment and in 1st Special Operational Detachment Delta, and one is a physician who is certified in Undersea Warfare Medicine, which is what is taught at the Navy Undersea Medical Institute. It means he is certified to work as a doctor on a submarine. Naval Special Warfare medical training is done within the Navy Special Operations Medical Institute, which certifies corpsmen and combat medics for the Naval Special Warfare community. So it is unclear if he comes out of the Navy Special Warfare community, ie Navy Special Ops, or if he wore dolphins, not a trident. The final member has no military experience, or even civilian service with the Department of Defense or the Services.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, as reported by The Washington Post and quoted above, has already indicated that what Aegis is saying it has been contracted to do will run afoul of both Federal and Minnesota state laws regarding elections.

It will also run afoul of Minnesota’s laws on unlawful militias.

Does the Second Amendment protect private militias?

No. In fact, the Supreme Court decided in 1886—and repeated in 2008—that the Second Amendment “does not prevent the prohibition of private paramilitary organizations.” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 621 (2008) (citing Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252 (1886)).

Is it legal to act as a private militia in Minnesota?

No. All 50 states prohibit private, unauthorized militias and military units from engaging in activities reserved for the state militia, including law enforcement activities. Some, including Minnesota, also prohibit paramilitary activity during or in furtherance of a civil disorder. Minnesota’s laws are described below:

Minnesota Constitution: The Minnesota Constitution forbids private military units from operating outside state authority, providing that “[t]he military shall be subordinate to the civil power.” Minn. Const. art. I, § 14.

Minnesota Statutes

Prohibition on private military units: Minnesota law makes it illegal for groups of people to organize as private militias without permission from the state. It is a misdemeanor for “any body of persons, other than the National Guard, troops of the United States,” military students, and veterans organizations, “to associate themselves together as a military company with arms.” Minn. Stat. § 624.61.

Prohibition on paramilitary activity: In Minnesota, it is a gross misdemeanor to either:

“(1) teach[] or demonstrate[] to any other person how to use or make any firearm, or explosive or incendiary device capable of causing injury or death, knowing or having reason to know that it will be unlawfully employed for use in, or in furtherance of, a civil disorder”; or

(2) “assemble[] with one or more persons for the purpose of training with, practicing with, or being instructed in the use of any firearm, or explosive or incendiary device capable of causing injury or death, with the intent that it be unlawfully employed for use in, or in furtherance of, a civil disorder.” Minn. Stat. § 609.669.

Georgetown University Law School’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) recommends the following actions at the bottom of their fact sheets on the illegality of militias in all fifty states if one sees armed groups and/or individuals near a polling place:

What should I do if I see armed groups near a polling place or voter registration drive?

First, document what you see:

  •  What are the armed people doing?
  • What are the armed people wearing?
  • Are they carrying firearms? If so, what type? If not, are they carrying other types of weapons?
  • Are they wearing insignia? If so, what does it say or look like?
  • Are they bearing signs or flags?
  • Do they seem to be patrolling like a law enforcement officer might do?
  • Do they seem to be coordinating their actions?
  • Do they have a leader?
  • Are they stopping or talking to people outside of their group?
  • Do they appear to be provoking or threatening violence? If so, what are they doing specifically?
  • Are people turning away from the polling station after seeing or speaking with them?Second, call Election Protection at 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) to report what you see.Assistance in also available in Spanish at 888-VE-Y-VOTA (888- 839-8682), in Arabic at 844- YALLA-US (844-915-5187), and Asian languages at 888-API-VOTE (1-888-174-8683). A video call number for American Sign Language is available at 301-818-VOTE (301-818-8683).

If Mr. Caudle deploys his paramilitary contractors to Minnesota on behalf of unidentified Minnesota business owners with the contract run through a shell company (unidentified business organization/UBO) to obscure who is actually hiring and paying him, they are not only going to run afoul of Federal and Minnesota election law, but also Minnesota’s state laws against private paramilitary units and activities.

As they say in the Ranger Regiment: “That’s a technique!”

Open thread!

Adam L. Silverman, PhD served as a Senior Fellow for Special Operations at the Center for Special Operations Study and Research at US Special Operations Command’s Joint Special Operations University in 2015. He served as the Senior Civilian Advisor/Cultural Advisor, under temporary assigned control, to the Branch Chief at US Army Civil Affairs, which is part of US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC), from October 2012 through December 2013. In November 2018 he gave the keynote address at the US Army Psychological Operations Regiment’s 100th Anniversary Regimental Dinner.

The Former Special Operations Bubbas Sought To Provide Private Security in Minneapolis On Election Day Are Going To Be Breaking All Sorts of LawsPost + Comments (102)