#Directorate of Intelligence for Continuity Enforcement

[drunkenskunk]

So, this thing I've been working on:

The antagonists of this fake "transcript of a military operation gone horribly wrong" are called Impact Security Services Solutions. They're meant to be a bunch of bloodthirsty jarhead mercenary operator types. You know the sort: Shadow Company from the Calls of Duty, the hundreds of PMCs from the Metal Gear games, the faceless grunts in Trepang2, the Heavy Echo troopers from Bulletstorm... the list of these nameless, faceless operator grunts designed specifically for you to mow down by the hundreds and not feel bad goes on and on forever.

In my ongoing mission to start drawing again, I'm going to attempt - emphasis on attempt, mind you - to sketch out what these assholes are supposed to look like. Both to get a better handle on what their vibe is like and what they're all about beyond "bloodthirsty jarheads," but also because... I'm curious. How am I going to translate the nebulous, indistinct shapes in my head into something solid? What would they look like in the seconds before Tuera turns them all into chunky salsa?

Step one: come up with a list of hardware these mercenaries would potentially use, so I can find some good reference photos.

I think I may need to call in a professional to help me out here. Hey @frogblast-the-ventcore, are you busy? Can you think of any cursed guns for a bunch of dipshit mercenaries to use?

[glitteringsunshine]

Pairing: Leroy Jethro Gibbs x reader wife.

NSFW ,MDNI

Trigger warning: knife play. 

You have been assigned to go over allocation of funds and budget planning as State’s  liaison with NCIS on a special joint Navy and state intelligence  project and hatch out a strategy.  You negotiate with a certain Leroy Jethro Gibbs. You have a sneaking suspicion why the NCIS director has assigned him for the job. This guy hates the bureaucratic processes. But he is really great at intimidating  people. No wonder he is the best interrogator at law enforcement history. With you often hailed as the best negotiator in diplomatic services, Vance wanted someone who could match you. It is one thing to talk with a man as stubborn as Gibbs. It’s a different game when you are secretly married to him.  The talks led to no resolutions leaving you both frustrated. 

You had gone to your office at the state department after the talks , trying hard to come up with a policy that is both agreeable to NCIS and state.  Your head ached as you entered home. Jethro was already home. You heard him working on his boat in the basement. As you made your way down the stairs , Jethro looked up. 

“ Done hiding in the office?” he asked. 

“ I didn’t  want to argue anymore. Wanted to keep the fighting  restricted at work. You sigh.”

“ So the best way to do that is avoid coming home till  late into the night ,hoping I would be asleep by then?” he said as he held you by the waist pulling you close to him.”

“ Didn’t  say it was a good idea.” You sigh.

“ No. It sure isn’t .” leaning in close , with his lips inches away from yours. 

“ I don’t want to fight either , but I would rather fight with you than avoiding you.” Gibbs declared as he claimed your lips. This was not a soft gentle kiss. It was a madly passionate  ,demanding one. You kissed him back with full vigour till you both had to break it for air. He rested his forehead against yours as both of you closed your eyes feeling each other’s warmth. 

“ Here, I got this for you” he said, taking out a small pocket knife and handing it to you.

“ It’s blunt , and hence 100 percent safe. It won’t break skin.” He continued. A blushed as you remembered that you had confessed to him about getting him to fuck you on as he held a knife. Of course he wouldn’t  do it with a real life. He would never compromise your safety. 

“ Jethro” you moan desire pooling in your core. 

“ I need you to remember baby , that I will stop whenever you want me to. Remember your safe words honey?” 

You nod as Jethro kisses you, reassuringly this time. 

“ Ready ?” he asks.

“ Yes babe. Treat me like your little slut.” You whisper. Jethro’s eyes glimmer with arousal. He knows exactly what you want and he is really eager to do that. 

He turns you and hold the knife against your throat from behind. He leaves a trail of kisses on your neck as you moan. He turns you around as you face him. 

“ Strip whore” he commands and you clench your core with arousal as you hear his words. You unbutton your shirt as you pull it off from your body. He gets impatient and unhooks the bra himself. He softly grazes the knife against your breasts before cupping your breasts and flicking your nipples with his fingers. He pushes you on the workbench and engulfs a nipple in his mouth allowing his tongue to work it’s magic. He simultaneously  runs the knife against your thighs. He bunches your skirt up before taking off your panties. He feels the wetness inside you. 

“ My slut is really horny. Look at that pussy dripping” he chuckles. 

“ Now kneel” he commands and you follow. He offers up your fingers and you suck them tasting your juices. He sits down gesturing you to come towards him. You crawl towards him. He settles you on his lap ass up on the air. You feel his hardness and chuckle. 

“ Little brat” he pretends to chide you but clearly enjoys your bratty side. He rubs your ass before spanking you. 

“ Count” he orders. 

 You look up to him mischievously. You nod your head and say “ Nope”. 

You giggle rubbing yourself against his manhood. He shoves his fingers inside you hitting the right point. He pumps in and out. As you are on the edge, he stops tasting you in his fingers. You groan in protest. He chuckles and repeats yourself. “ Nope”. You pout. 

He kneels you against the workbench and takes of his belt. He kneads your butt before hitting it with the belt. He ensures that the impact is low so it does not sting. 

“ One” you whisper. 

“ So my slut knows how to count” he chuckled as he hit you again. 

“ Two” 

“  Forgetting something ?” he grins.

“ Sir. Two Sir”.

“ Good girl” he pats your head. He spreads your legs with his knees. He unzips his pants and lines his cock with your pussy. He enters you with a deep thrust. You felt the fullness of his cock as he moved inside you. He could feel you are close as your walls clench against him. 

“ Oh love you are so tight” he hoarsely whispers . 

“ Jethro ,Sir please” you say. 

“ Yes love”

“ I am gonna cum”. 

“ Not yet baby girl. “

“ Jethro please”

“ Shsh baby girl , take it like a good girl” he whispers as he softly bites your neck. He slows down is pace edging you before he paced his thrusts. 

“ Jethro I , I please” you mumbled unable to form a coherent sentence in the throes of pleasure. 

“ Tell me what you want love”.

“ Please, please let me cum” 

“ Okay” 

That’s all you needed as you unfurled on his words. He sat down pulling you on his lap. 

“ Turn around and ride me” he commands. 

You know how much he loves to look into your eyes when he fucks you. You straddle him. You moved with him .  He grazed the knife against you as he trusted deep hitting the right spots. You closed your eyes as you felt a wave of pleasure emanating from your core. 

“ look at me” he said hoarsely.  You look up seeing how his eyes mirrored your pleasure. He held you right against him. 

“ Cum for me baby girl. Please” he says.  The please really did it for you as you cum on his command. He does not slow down and holds you as you enter a state of euphoria. 

“Jethro please , please” you cry out as you feel another orgasm nearing. 

“ Yes baby girl . Cum. You don’t need my permission”.

“ I ,I want your cum. I want to feel your cum inside me when I cum. I want us to cum together” you cry.  

“ Okay” he nods.

You clench against him , feeling the orgasm. “ Jethro now” you say . He claims your lips silencing your moans as ropes and ropes of his cum hits your insides as you cum on his cock.  

“ Wow” he whispers.

“ Thank you” you say. 

“ I love you wifey”. He says

“ I love you too Jethro.”

You take out a gobble of his cum from your pussy before tasting it. 

“ That’s hot” he says as you chuckle. But before you can taste him again he takes your fingers and tastes himself.  He cups your face and gently kissed the top of your head. “ My sweet girl” he whispers “I love you so much” . 

“ Me too Jethro” you whisper as you hands you a glass of water. 

“ Now hydrate” he says as he pats your head. 

That’s another thing you love about your husband. He never skims on aftercare. Truth be told you love everything about him. 

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Matt Davies :: Shirk. http://Newsday.com/matt

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 24, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 25, 2024

Since the night of the November 5, election, Trump and his allies have insisted that he won what Trump called “an unprecedented and powerful mandate.” But as the numbers have continued to come in, it’s clear that such a declaration is both an attempt to encourage donations— fundraising emails refer to Trump’s “LANDSLIDE VICTORY”—and an attempt to create the illusion of power to push his agenda. 

The reality is that Trump’s margin over Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris will likely end up around 1.5 points. According to James M. Lindsay, writing for the Council of Foreign Relations, it is the fifth smallest since 1900, which covers 32 presidential races. Exit polls showed that Trump’s favorability rating was just 48% and that more voters chose someone other than Trump. And, as Lindsay points out, Trump fell 4 million votes short of President Joe Biden in 2020. 

Political science professor Lynn Vavreck of the University of California, Los Angeles, told Peter Baker of the New York Times: “If the definition of landslide is you win both the popular vote and Electoral College vote, that’s a new definition” On the other hand, she added, “Nobody gains any kind of influence by going out and saying, ‘I barely won, and now I want to do these big things.’”

Trump’s allies are indeed setting out to do big things, and they are big things that are unpopular. 

Trump ran away from Project 2025 during the campaign because it was so unpopular. He denied he knew anything about it, calling it “ridiculous and abysmal,” and on September 16 the leader of Trump’s transition team, Howard Lutnick, said there were “Absolutely zero. No connection. Zero” ties between the team and Project 2025. Now, though, Trump has done an about-face and has said he will nominate at least five people associated with Project 2025 to his administration. 

Those nominees include Russell Vought, one of the project's key authors, who calls for dramatically increasing the powers of the president; Tom Homan, who as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) oversaw the separation of children from their parents; John Ratcliffe, whom the Senate refused in 2019 to confirm as Director of National Intelligence because he had no experience in intelligence; Brendan Carr, whom Trump wants to put at the head of the Federal Communications Commission and who is already trying to silence critics by warning he will punish broadcasters who Trump feels have been unfair to him; and Stephen Miller, the fervently anti-immigrant ideologue.

Project 2025 calls for the creation of an extraordinarily strong president who will gut the civil service and replace its nonpartisan officials with those who are loyal to the president. It calls for filling the military and the Department of Justice with those loyal to the president. And then, the project plans that with his new power, the president will impose Christian nationalism on the United States of America, ending immigration, and curtailing rights for LGBTQ+ individuals as well as women and racial and ethnic minorities.

Project 2025 was unpopular when people learned about it. 

And then there is the threat of dramatic cuts to the U.S. government, suggested by the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, headed by billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. They are calling for cuts of $2 trillion to the items in the national budget that provide a safety net for ordinary Americans at the same time that Trump is promising additional tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Musk, meanwhile, is posturing as if he is the actual president, threatening on Saturday, for example: “Those who break the law will be arrested and that includes mayors.”  

On Meet the Press today, current representative and senator-elect Adam Schiff (D-CA) reacted to the “dictator talk,” with which Trump is threatening his political opponents, pointing out that "[t]he American people…voted on the basis of the economy—they wanted change to the economy—they weren’t voting for dictatorship. So I think he is going to misread his mandate if that’s what he thinks voters chose him for.”

That Trump and his team are trying desperately to portray a marginal victory as a landslide in order to put an extremist unpopular agenda into place suggests another dynamic at work. 

For all Trump’s claims of power, he is a 78-year-old man who is declining mentally and who neither commands a majority of voters nor has shown signs of being able to transfer his voters to a leader in waiting. 

Trump’s team deployed Vice President–elect J.D. Vance to the Senate to drum up votes for the confirmation of Florida representative Matt Gaetz to become the United States attorney general. But Vance has only been in the Senate since 2022 and is not noticeably popular. He—and therefore Trump—was unable to find the votes the wildly unqualified Gaetz needed for confirmation, forcing him to withdraw his name from consideration. 

The next day, Gaetz began to advertise on Cameo, an app that allows patrons to commission a personalized video for fans, asking a minimum of $550.00 for a recording. Gaetz went from United States representative to Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney general to making videos for Cameo in a little over a week. 

It is a truism in studying politics that it’s far more important to follow power than it is to follow people. Right now, there is a lot of power sloshing around in Washington, D.C. 

Trump is trying to convince the country that he has scooped up all that power. But in fact, he has won reelection by less than 50% of the vote, and his vice president is not popular. The policies Trump is embracing are so unpopular that he himself ran away from them when he was campaigning. And now he has proposed filling his administration with a number of highly unqualified figures who, knowing the only reason they have been elevated is that they are loyal to Trump, will go along with his worst instincts. With that baggage, it is not clear he will be able to cement enough power to bring his plans to life.

If power remains loose, it could get scooped up by cabinet officials, as it was during a similarly chaotic period in the 1920s. In that era, voters elected to the presidency former newspaperman and Republican backbencher Warren G. Harding of Ohio, who promised to return the country to “normalcy” after eight years of the presidency of Democrat Woodrow Wilson and the nation’s engagement in World War I. That election really was a landslide, with Harding and his running mate, Calvin Coolidge, winning more than 60% of the popular vote in 1920.

But Harding was badly out of his depth in the presidency and spent his time with cronies playing bridge and drinking upstairs at the White House—despite Prohibition—while corrupt members of his administration grabbed all they could. 

With such a void in the executive branch, power could have flowed to Congress. But after twenty years of opposing first Theodore Roosevelt, and then William Howard Taft, and then Woodrow Wilson, Congress had become adept at opposing presidents but had split into factions that made it unable to transition to using power, rather than opposing its use.

And so power in that era flowed to members of Harding’s Cabinet, primarily to Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who put into place a fervently pro-business government that continued after Harding’s untimely death into the presidency of Calvin Coolidge, who made little effort to recover the power Harding had abandoned. After Hoover became president and their system fell to ruin in the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took their lost power and used it to create a new type of government. 

In this moment, Trump’s people are working hard to convince Americans that they have gathered up all the power in Washington, D.C., but that power is actually still sloshing around. Trump is trying to force through the Senate a number of unqualified and dangerous nominees for high-level positions, threatening Republican senators that if they don’t bow to him, Elon Musk will fund primary challengers, or suggesting he will push them into recess so he can appoint his nominees without their constitutionally-mandated advice and consent. 

But Trump and his people do not, in fact, have a mandate. Trump is old and weak, and power is up for grabs. It is possible that MAGA Republicans will, in the end, force Republican senators into their camp, permitting Trump and his cronies to do whatever they wish. 

It is also possible that Republican senators will themselves take back for Congress the power that has lately concentrated in presidents, check the most dangerous and unpopular of Trump’s plans, and begin the process of restoring the balance of the three branches of government.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mariacallous]

Earlier this year, a Pennsylvania man beheaded his father, who worked as a federal employee, and displayed the severed head in a video where he urged viewers to rise up against the government. Another man in Illinois was building bombs he hoped to one day use against a “corrupt government.” In two separate cases, people were arrested for threatening to kill President Joe Biden and federal officials. An Arizona man plotted a mass shooting at a rap concert in Atlanta because he wanted to spark a race war ahead of what he believed was “impending martial law.”

All five of these cases, which occurred over the past eight months, have been linked by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis to what it sees as a concerning trend: fantasies and conspiracies of an impending civil war mobilizing individuals toward violence surrounding the US election.

The memo, first reported by WIRED, was circulated last month to law enforcement agencies.

“Some domestic violent extremists (DVEs) are reacting to the 2024 election season and prominent policy issues by engaging in illegal preparatory or violent activity that they link to the narrative of an impending civil war, raising the risk of violence against government targets and ideological opponents,” the memo states.

Online chatter about civil war has become an inevitable knee-jerk response to any divisive sociopolitical news event in recent years—from prosecutions of Capitol rioters and the attempted assassination of Donald Trump to disputes over enforcement at the US–Mexico border. And that chatter has, perhaps unsurprisingly, only continued to ramp up ahead of the 2024 election.

Intelligence analysts say that they have seen online discussions about preparing for future violence against public officials and federal agents and are aware that some extremists are using the heightened political environment as an opportunity to engage in “illegal preparatory or violent activity,” according to the DHS report. The assessment aligns with earlier WIRED reporting that indicates the paramilitary movement has been organizing and training ahead of the election. The report was first obtained by Property of the People, a nonprofit focused on transparency and national security, under open records law. “Donald Trump is yet again inciting election and immigration-related violence," says Ryan Shapiro, executive director of Property of the People. "The documents make plain that many of his followers are listening.”

DHS also cautioned that it is unable to get a grasp on the full scale of the threat. “We lack a complete threat picture due the ability of some DVEs to evade law enforcement using advanced encryption,” the agency wrote. And because extremists have gotten tech-savvier, intelligence officials don’t really know whether they’re joining forces.

This is a trend that researchers and experts have observed especially since the Capitol riot nearly four years ago. “We’ve seen people move from mainstream platforms, where they were active in organizing January 6, and shift to platforms that offer more perceived anonymity, less moderation, and less reporting to law enforcement,” said Katherine Keneally, US director of threat analysis and prevention at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “It is a law enforcement intelligence gap, it’s a gap for the whole field. We don’t see everything we once did.”

Regardless of whether extremists are coalescing or whether the threat remains atomized, the assessment recognizes that online chatter about civil war had already inspired plans for real-world violence.

In January, Justin Mohn, a 32-year-old man from Levittown, Pennsylvania, beheaded his father, a federal employee, and displayed the severed head in a 15-minute tirade uploaded online. In the video, titled “Mohn’s Militia-Call to Arms for American Patriots,” Mohn urged viewers to rise up against the government and hunt down federal agents and judges.

Months later, in March, federal agents arrested Benjamin Brown, a 45-year-old man in Waterville, Maine, for making threats to kill President Biden and other officials. The man allegedly claimed he was stockpiling weapons and ammo for a civil war and, according to an affidavit, said he wanted to hunt migrants and “burn Washington to the fucking ground.” Brown was charged with making interstate threats.

Then, in May, a stop for a minor traffic violation in Pekin, Illinois, led police to discover a padlocked canvas bag inside the vehicle containing a .45-caliber pistol and two homemade pipe bombs belonging to 34-year-old Dalton Mattus. When investigators searched Mattus’ home, after a brief standoff, they allegedly found more pipe bombs. A local radio station reported that Mattus told police he hoped to use the bombs defensively against “undocumented immigrants and a corrupt government.” It turned out that Mattus also had an extensive social media presence; for years, he had promoted QAnon conspiracy theories and civil war fantasies, advocated violence against federal officials, Democrats, and immigrants, and urged his followers to prepare for imminent conflict.

In June, an Arizona man who worked as a vendor at gun shows was indicted for allegedly plotting a mass shooting targeting Black people at a rap concert in Atlanta with the goal of inciting a “race war” ahead of the 2024 election. According to an affidavit, Mark Adams Prieto, 58, believed that “martial law will be implemented shortly after the 2024 election.” He also said he hoped to leave confederate flags at the site of his planned mass shooting, to send the message that “we’re going to fight back now and every whitey will be the enemy across the whole country.”

Also in June, 27-year-old Joseph Rose, a US veteran living on New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range, was arrested for making threats online against Biden and federal employees. He vowed to declare war on the US and “attack federal employees on sight” over Biden’s immigration policies and said if anyone voted for Biden, “I'll shoot you on sight for supporting pedophiles.”

Intelligence analysts say that they’re most concerned about lone offenders or “small cells” taking violent action in the coming months, citing the ongoing prosecutions of the January 6 rioters as well as “false flag allegations that an event is orchestrated by the government to entrap and arrest attendees” as likely deterrents to large-scale mobilization.

DHS says it is continuing to advise federal, state, and local partners and urges law enforcement and the public to remain vigilant and report suspicious activity to authorities.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Gabe Fleisher at Wake Up To Politics:

There is much I could tell you about Kash Patel, who President-elect Trump announced on Saturday as his pick to become FBI director in his second term. But instead, I’ll allow some of the people who worked with him in Trump’s first term to give you an introduction. First, some background: Patel entered Trump’s orbit via Devin Nunes, who was then a Republican congressman and now leads Truth Social’s corporate parent. As a congressional aide, Patel was the author of the so-called “Nunes memo,” which sought to pick apart the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties with Russia.

He entered the White House in 2019 and quickly grew to wield “unique access” to the president, feeding information to him — including false claims about Ukraine that helped lead to Trump’s first impeachment. Over the next two years, Patel would quickly rise through the ranks of the administration, jumping from the National Security Council to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to the Department of Defense. In the expansive library of books that have been written about Trump’s first administration, Patel is a frequent character. We’ll start with “A Sacred Oath,” the memoir by Trump-era Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who wrote that Patel’s hiring marked the emergence of “a darker, more aggressive evolution of the Trump White House.”

In Esper’s book, the main episode involving Patel is the 2020 military operation to rescue Philip Walton, an American who had been kidnapped and was being kept in Nigeria. According to Esper, the operation was in a holding pattern to ensure that the U.S. had received permission to enter the airspace of the countries it would need to fly over. Eventually, Patel — then at the NSC — told a Pentagon official that then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had received the necessary permissions. Armed with that information, Esper gave the operation his green light. A few hours later, though, Esper learned some “disturbing news”: the U.S. apparently hadn’t received permission to enter the airspace of one country — and the military planes were now only fifteen miles away from that country’s border. Esper called Pompeo to figure out what had happened. As it turned out, not only had Pompeo not told Patel — as Patel had claimed — that the permissions had gone through, but apparently the two had never even spoken. Esper’s staff, he wrote, suspected that Patel simply “made the approval story up.” 

[...] Whether Patel will be allowed to “serve at the highest level of the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency,” as Barr put it, will be up to the Republican-led Senate. So far, reactions are mixed — several GOP senators have expressed approval of Patel; others have been more hesitant. The bureau’s current director, Chris Wray — who Trump would have to fire in the middle of his 10-year term in order to install Patel — is well-liked among most Republican lawmakers; his dismissal could ruffle some senatorial feathers, but so far most Republicans seem, at the very least, open to the swap. For clues on what Patel might do as FBI director, there’s one more book to consult: his. In “Government Gangsters,” Patel is quite explicit about his vision for the bureau. “Most importantly,” he writes, “we need to get the FBI the hell out of Washington, D.C.” Once the FBI’s D.C. headquarters is emptied, Patel continues, agents can be spread out across the country, away from “the swamp.” Patel also calls for the FBI’s authority to be “dramatically limited,” refocused on “real, physical threats” instead of “ideological witch hunts.” In interviews, though, he has called for a number of ideologically-tinged investigations, including against Trump critics in the government and media.

Yesterday’s Wake Up To Politics has detail on potential FBI head Kash Patel’s enemies list.

See Also:

HuffPost: Who Is On Kash Patel's 'Random Enemies List'?

[misfitwashere]

December 1, 2024 

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

DEC 2

Over the holiday weekend, President-elect Trump continued to name the people he wants in his incoming administration. His picks seem designed to destroy the institutions of the democratic American state and replace those institutions with an authoritarian government whose officials are all loyal to Trump.

Congress—which represents the American people—designed governmental institutions like the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Department of Defense to support the mission of the Constitution, which is the fundamental law of the United States of America. The Constitution is not partisan, and in 1883, after a mentally ill disappointed office seeker assassinated President James A. Garfield, Congress passed a law requiring that the people who staff government offices be hired on the basis of their skills, not their partisanship.

The people who work in governmental institutions—and therefore the institutions themselves—are rather like the ballast that keeps a ship upright and balanced in different weathers. Nonpartisan government officials who clock in to do their job keep the government running smoothly and according to the law no matter whom voters elect to the presidency.

It is precisely that stability of the American state that MAGA leaders want to destroy. In their view, the modern American state has weakened the nation by trying to enforce equality for all Americans, making women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities equal to white, Christian men. But they have been unable to persuade voters to vote away the institutions that support the modern state.

Even in the 2024 campaign, voters so hated the blueprint for destroying the modern government and replacing it with a super-strong president who would impose Christian nationalism that Trump and his allies ran away from that blueprint: Project 2025.

Now, though, with Trump having won the 2024 presidential election by a razor-thin margin, MAGA leaders are claiming a mandate to destroy the American state and replace it with an authoritarian government staffed with partisans whose most obvious quality is their loyalty to Trump.

Russian specialist and military scholar Tom Nichols of The Atlantic notes that the Russians talk about “power ministries,” which are “the departments that have significant legal and coercive capacity.” Nichols notes that in the U.S., those include the Justice Department, the Defense Department, the FBI, and the intelligence community, all of which Trump is attempting to destroy by placing unqualified loyalists at their head.

For the crucially important post of attorney general, who is responsible for overseeing the enforcement of the rule of law across the nation, Trump first tapped former Florida representative Matt Gaetz, whose association with drug use and sex trafficking forced him to withdraw, and then named Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general who has insisted that the legal cases against Trump are proof that the justice system has been “weaponized” against Trump.

To head the FBI, the bureau Trump has long insisted was persecuting him through its investigation of the ties between his 2016 campaign and Russian operatives—ties that Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee have confirmed in detail—Trump has tapped loyalist and conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, who has vowed to use the FBI to exact revenge on those Trump considers his enemies.

That Patel’s appointment is designed to destroy the FBI is clear not least because installing him would require Trump to fire current FBI director Christoper Wray. FBI directors serve ten-year terms precisely so they are not tied to any administration, and Wray was Trump’s own appointee in his first term. Indeed, the idea that the FBI is insufficiently right wing for Trump’s new administration speaks volumes: in its entire history, the FBI has never had a Democrat in charge of it. Under Patel, the nation’s chief law enforcement agency would be a tool of the president.

For director of the CIA, Trump has tapped unqualified loyalist attack dog John Ratcliffe; for director of national intelligence, the person who oversees all American intelligence agencies, Trump has tapped former representative Tulsi Gabbard, whose ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin and Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad make her loyalties suspect. Taken together, Trump’s appointments to these powerful departments amount to an attempt to destroy the nation’s fundamental institutions.

As Charlie Sykes points out, Trump’s appointments are not only a “[m]assive Fuq U to institutions…[b]ut also a huge FU to the Supreme Court because Trump doesn’t think they will be a check on his campaign of lawless retribution.”

The Atlantic’s Nichols told MSNBC today that Trump’s appointees are “there to build an authoritarian cadre and to put themselves beyond the reach of the rule of law.”

With loyalty trumping ability and merit under an autocrat, the quality of government officials plummets. This pays off for an autocratic leader because those appointed to serve in an autocratic government are usually unemployable in a merit-based system, making them fiercely loyal to the leader who has elevated them beyond their abilities.

Autocrats start by rewarding family, and Trump has certainly followed that suit. After years in which Republicans went after President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who was never a government employee, over the weekend, Trump announced that he intends to appoint his daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law, New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner, as ambassador to France. In 2004, Kushner pleaded guilty to 16 federal crimes and served time in prison before Trump pardoned him in 2020. Trump also announced that he will appoint his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, Lebanese-born billionaire Massad Boulos, as White House senior adviser on Arab and Middle East affairs.

This weekend, an email from the mother of Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, came to light. Written in 2018, when Hegseth was in the middle of a divorce from his second wife, who filed for divorce after Hegseth got a co-worker pregnant, the email told Hegseth to “get some help and take an honest look at yourself.” Writing “[o]n behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way,” Penelope Hegseth said: “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”

Penelope Hegseth has since praised her son.

Meanwhile, those loyal to a rising regime attack public servants to make others afraid to speak out. On Friday, billionaire Elon Musk posted on X that Alexander Vindman, former National Security Council director for European affairs, is “on the payroll of Ukrainian oligarchs and has committed treason against the United States, for which he will pay the appropriate penalty.” Vindman was a key figure in Trump’s first impeachment after being on the phone call in which Trump tried to get Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to smear the Democratic opponent he considered most dangerous to his reelection prospects, then–former vice president Joe Biden, before Trump would release money Congress had appropriated for Ukraine’s defense against Russian incursions.

But Vindman, who famously told Congress that he had assured his father that he was safe speaking up against the president because “here, right matters,” wasn’t taking such an attack quietly.

“Elon, here you go again making false and completely unfounded accusations without providing any specifics,” Vindman posted back. “That’s the kind of response one would expect from a conspiracy theorist. What oligarch? What treason?

“Let me help you out with the facts: I don’t take/have never taken money from any money from oligarchs Ukrainian or…otherwise.

“I do run a nonprofit foundation. The HereRightMattersFoundation.org to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s unprovoked attack on Feb 24, 2022. I served in the military for nearly 22 years and my loyalty is to supporting the U.S. Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. That’s why I reported presidential corruption when I witnessed an effort to steal an election. That report was in classified channels and when called by Congress to testify about presidential corruption I did so, as required by law.

“You, Elon, appear to believe you can act with impunity and are attempting to silence your critics. I’m not intimidated.”

As Trump sets out to turn the government into an instrument for his own power and vengeance, President Biden tonight pardoned his son Hunter Biden. Laying out the history of Republicans’ persecution of Hunter to weaken his father, the president said in a statement, “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son—and that is wrong.... [A]nd there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough…. I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice…. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”

—

[40ouncesandamule]

Transcription:

Dear High Commissioner,

This will be my last official communication to you as Director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

I write at a moment of great anguish for the world, including for many of our colleagues. Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it. As someone who has investigated human rights in Palestine since the 1980s, lived in Gaza as a UN human rights advisor in the 1990s, and carried out several human rights missions to the country before and since, this is deeply personal to me.

I also worked in these halls through the genocides against the Tutsis, Bosnian Muslims, the Yazidi, and the Rohingya. In each case, when the dust settled on the horrors that had been perpetrated against defenseless civilian populations, it became painfully clear that we had failed in our duty to meet the imperatives of prevention of mass atrocites, of protection of the vulnerable, and of accountability for perpetrators. And so it has been with successive waves of murder and persecution against the Palestinians throughout the entire life of the UN.

High Commissioner, we are failing again.

As a human rights lawyer with more than three decades of experience in the field, I know well that the concept of genocide has often been subject to political abuse. But the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate. In Gaza, civilian homes, schools, churches, mosques, and medical institutions are wantonly attacked as thousands of civilians are massacred. In the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, homes are seized and reassigned based entirely on race, and violent settler pogroms are accompanied by Israeli military units. Across the land, Apartheid rules.

This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine. What’s more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations “to ensure respect” for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities.

In concert with this, western corporate media, increasingly captured and state-adjacent, are in open breach of Article 20 of the ICCPR, continuously dehumanizing Palestinians to facilitate the genocide, and broadcasting propaganda for war and advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, and violence. US-based social media companies are suppressing the voices of human rights defenders while amplifying pro-Israel propaganda. Israel lobby online-trolls and GONGOS [sic] are harassing and smearing human rights defenders, and western universities and employers are collaborating with them to punish those who dare to speak out against the atrocities. In the wake of this genocide, there must be an accounting for these actors as well, just as there was for radio Milles Collines in Rwanda.

In such circumstances, the demands on our organization for principled and effective action are greater than ever. But we have not met the challenge. The protective enforcement power Security Council has again been blocked by US intransigence, the SG is under assault for the mildest of protestations, and our human rights mechanisms are under sustained slanderous attack by an organized, online impunity network.

Decades of distraction by the illusory and largely disingenuous promises of Oslo have diverted the Organization from its core duty to defend international law, international human rights, and the Charter itself. The mantra of the “two-state solution” has become an open joke in the corridors of the UN, both for its utter impossibility in fact, and for its total failure to account for the inalienable human rights of the Palestinian people. The so-called “Quartet” has become nothing more than a fig leaf for inaction and for subservience to a brutal status quo. The (US-scripted) deference to “agreements between the parties themselves” (in place of international law) was always a transparent slight-of-hand, designed to reinforce the power of Israel over the rights of the occupied and dispossessed Palestinians.

High Commissioner, I came to this Organization first in the 1980s, because I found in it a principled, norm-based institution that was squarely on the side of human rights, including in cases where the powerful US, UK, and Europe were not on our side. While my own government, its subsidiarity institutions, and much of the US media were still supporting or justifying South African apartheid, Israeli oppression, and Central American death squads, the UN was standing up for the oppressed peoples of those lands. We had international law on our side. We had human rights on our side. We had principle on our side. Our authority was rooted in our integrity. But no more.

In recent decades, key parts of the UN have surrendered to the power of the US, and to fear of the Israel Lobby, to abandon these principles, and to retreat from international law itself. We have lost a lot in this abandonment, not least our own global credibility. But the Palestinian people have sustained the biggest losses as a result of our failures. It is a stunning historic irony that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in the same year that the Nakba was perpetrated against the Palestinian people. As we commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the UDHR, we would do well to abandon the old cliché that the UDHR was born out of the atrocities that proceeded it, and to admit that it was born alongside one of the most atrocious genocides of the 20th Century, that of the destruction of Palestine. In some sense, the framers were promising human rights to everyone, except the Palestinian people. And let us remember as well, that the UN itself carries the original sin of helping to facilitate the dispossession of the Palestinian people by ratifying the European settler colonial project that seized Palestinian land and turned it over to the colonists. We have much for which to atone.

But the path to atonement is clear. We have much to learn from the principled stance taken in cities around the world in recent days, as masses of people stand up against the genocide, even at risk of beatings and arrest. Palestinians and their allies, human rights defenders of every stripe, Christian and Muslim organizations, and progressive Jewish voices saying “not in our name”, are all leading the way. All we have to do is to follow them.

Yesterday, just a few blocks from here, New York’s Grand Central Station was completely taken over by thousands of Jewish human rights defenders standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people and demanding an end to Israeli tyranny (many risking arrest, in the process). In doing so, they stripped away in an instant the Israeli hasbara propaganda point (and old antisemitic trope) that Israel somehow represents the Jewish people. It does not. And, as such, Israel is solely responsible for its crimes. On this point, it bears repeating, in spite of Israel lobby smears to the contrary, that criticism of Israel’s human rights violations is not antisemitic, any more than criticism of Saudi violations is Islamophobic, criticism of Myanmar violations is anti-Buddhist, or criticism of Indian violations is anti-Hindu. When they seek to silence us with smears, we must raise our voice, not lower it. I trust you will agree, High Commissioner, that this is what speaking truth to power is all about.

But I also find hope in those parts of the UN that have refused to compromise the Organization’s human rights principles in spite of enormous pressures to do so. Our independent special rapporteurs, commissions of enquiry, and treaty body experts, alongside most of our staff, have continued to stand up for the human rights of the Palestinian people, even as other parts of the UN (even at the highest levels) have shamefully bowed their heads to power. As the custodians of the human rights norms and standards, OHCHR has a particular duty to defend those standards. Our job, I believe, is to make our voice heard, from the Secretary-General to the newest UN recruit, and horizontally across the wider UN system, insisting that the human rights of the Palestinian people are not up for debate, negotiation, or compromise anywhere under the blue flag.

What, then, would a UN-norm-based position look like? For what would we work if we were true to our rhetorical admonitions about human rights and equality for all, accountability for perpetrators, redress for victims, protection of the vulnerable, and empowerment for rights-holders, all under the rule of law? The answer, I believe, is simple—if we have the clarity to see beyond the propagandistic smokescreens that distort the vision of justice to which we are sworn, the courage to abandon fear and deference to powerful states, and the will to truly take up the banner of human rights and peace. To be sure, this is a long-term project and a steep climb. But we must begin now or surrender to unspeakable horror. I see ten essential points:

1. Legitimate action: First, we in the UN must abandon the failed (and largely disingenuous) Oslo paradigm, its illusory two-state solution, its impotent and complicit Quartet, and its subjugation of international law to the dictates of presumed political expediency. Our positions must be unapologetically based on international human rights and international law.

2. Clarity of Vision: We must stop the pretense that this is simply a conflict over land or religion between two warring parties and admit the reality of the situation in which a disproportionately powerful state is colonizing, persecuting, and dispossessing an indigenous population on the basis of their ethnicity.

3. One State based on human rights: We must support the establishment of a single, democratic, secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and, therefore, the dismantling of the deeply racist, settler-colonial project and an end to apartheid across the land.

4. Fighting Apartheid: We must redirect all UN efforts and resources to the struggle against apartheid, just as we did for South Africa in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s.

5. Return and Compensation: We must reaffirm and insist on the right to return and full compensation for all Palestinians and their families currently living in the occupied territories, in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and in the diaspora across the globe.

6. Truth and Justice: We must call for a transitional justice process, making full use of decades of accumulated UN investigations, enquiries, and reports, to document the truth, and to ensure accountability for all perpetrators, redress for all victims, and remedies for documented injustices.

7. Protection: We must press for the deployment of a well-resourced and strongly mandated UN protection force with a sustained mandate to protect civilians from the river to the sea.

8. Disarmament: We must advocate for the removal and destruction of Israel’s massive stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, lest the conflict lead to the total destruction of the region and, possibly, beyond.

9. Mediation: We must recognize that the US and other western powers are in fact not credible mediators, but rather actual parties to the conflict who are complicit with Israel in the violation of Palestinian rights, and we must engage them as such.

10. Solidarity: We must open our doors (and the doors of the SG) wide to the legions of Palestinian, Israeli, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian human rights defenders who are standing in solidarity with the people of Palestine and their human rights and stop the unconstrained flow of Israel lobbyists to the offices of UN leaders, where they advocate for continued war, persecution, apartheid, and impunity, and smear our human rights defenders for their principled defense of Palestinian rights.

This will take years to achieve, and western powers will fight us every step of the way, so we must be steadfast. In the immediate term, we must work for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the longstanding siege on Gaza, stand up against the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank (and elsewhere), document the genocidal assault in Gaza, help to bring massive humanitarian aid and reconstruction to the Palestinians, take care of our traumatized colleagues and their families, and fight like hell for a principled approach in the UN’s political offices.

The UN’s failure in Palestine thus far is not a reason for us to withdraw. Rather it should give us the courage to abandon the failed paradigm of the past, and fully embrace a more principled course. Let us, as OHCHR, boldly and proudly join the anti-apartheid movement that is growing all around the world, adding our logo to the banner of equality and human rights for the Palestinian people. The world is watching. We will all be accountable for where we stood at this crucial moment in history. Let us stand on the side of justice.

I thank you, High Commissioner, Volker, for hearing this final appeal from my desk. I will leave the Office in a few days for the last time, after more than three decades of service. But please do not hesitate to reach out if I can be of assistance in the future.

Sincerely,

Craig Mokhibe

[icontherecord]

ODNI Releases Intelligence Community Procedures Implementing New Safeguards in Executive Order 14086

  July 3, 2023 - The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), in coordination with elements of the Intelligence Community (IC), today releases the IC elements’ policies and procedures to implement the privacy and civil liberties safeguards specified in Executive Order 14086 “Enhancing Safeguards for United States Signals Intelligence Activities” (October 7, 2022).

When the President signed Executive Order (EO) 14086, the White House released a statement that the EO “direct[s] the steps that the United States will take to implement the U.S. commitments under the European Union-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (EU-U.S. DPF).” The statement continued that the EO “bolsters an already rigorous array of privacy and civil liberties safeguards for U.S. signals intelligence activities.” EO 14086 added further safeguards for U.S. signals intelligence activities, including that such activities: “take into consideration the privacy and civil liberties of all persons, regardless of nationality or country of residence” and “be conducted only when necessary to advance a validated intelligence priority and only to the extent and in a manner proportionate to that priority.” The Order mandates handling requirements and extends compliance and oversight responsibilities.

The IC elements’ procedures released today further implement the EO’s requirements, and thereby the United States’ commitments under the EU-U.S. DPF. As required by the EO, each IC element developed its procedures in consultation with the Attorney General, the ODNI Civil Liberties Protection Officer (CLPO), and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board. In implementing the EO’s safeguards, each set of procedures is tailored to the authorities, missions, and responsibilities of the IC elements.

IC Elements’ EO 14086 Procedures

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Procedures

Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Office of National Security Intelligence (ONSI) Procedures

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Procedures

National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Procedures

National Security Agency (NSA) Procedures

Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Procedures

Department of Energy Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (IN) Procedures

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis (IA) Procedures

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) United States Coast Guard (USCG) Procedures

Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) Procedures

Department of Treasury Office of Intelligence and Analysis (OIA) Procedures

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil approves $65 million Amazon fund to combat rainforest crimes 

Brazil's National Development Bank (BNDES) has given the green signal to allocate 318 million reais ($65 million) from the $1.3 billion Amazon Fund to establish a law enforcement initiative targeting deforestation and environmental crimes in the rainforest, according to a senior official cited by Reuters. 

This marks a significant step for the Amazon Fund, supported by four nations and managed by BNDES. The project, endorsed by the justice ministry and overseen by Brazil's Federal Police, aims to tackle illegal activities threatening the rainforest, such as logging and mining, which persist despite the government's efforts to reduce deforestation. The Amazon, crucial for absorbing carbon and combating global warming, faces ongoing challenges from unauthorised activities. 

Humberto Freire, the Federal Police's director for the Amazon and environmental crime, emphasised the need for collaborative action. "Without us all having the same purpose, integrated, sharing information and intelligence and acting together to strengthen the fight against environmental crimes, we will not move forward," Reuters quoted him as saying. 

Continue reading.

[reivun]

“That is the role you seem determined to play. So, it seems I must play mine.“ :)

doctor who sentence meme

the role he was ‘ determined ’ to play, huh. ivan allowed his amusement to show, it was better than the annoyance. he was previously under the impression that freed justine was intelligent. the old adage of assumptions is proving to be quite true which was another small annoyance. the predictability of people was a constant source of disappointment; even if it often came advantages.

there were different routes ivan could go with this; he could continue to play along in the song and dance but fairies were never not impulsive. he does have a meeting to get to in the next three hours. additionally — he has to make time to stop for coffee to survive the meeting. he could just walk off with no words but that felt too easy and cheap and a lot like running. and ivan has never run away, no, he’s been pushed away and forced away but never took it upon his own volition. he’d much rather deal with it.

if he’s late, ivan will forward the complaints from master bob to freed justine, then. 

“forgive me,” ivan said as he morphed his face away from an amused one to a more casual look, “i was a bit confused when you brought up roles and the like. you see, i never signed up for any play. though i do enjoy the arts, i’ve never partook in theater myself.” he paused. “the beauty of plays though are not the actors, but the work of those behind the scenes. and of course, the hard work of the director who enforces his vision.” another pause. “i wonder…what role do you think your director wants for us both? and how can one fully determine their own role if they lack the context to the script needed?”

ivan sighed and waved his hand. “forgive me, i am rambling. but think about it if you have the time. i encourage deep, critical thinking at all times.”

[drunkenskunk]

Meanwhile, back in my apartment...

To try and take my mind off of... [gestures vaguely at everything] ... I'm trying to get some writing done.

No idea if I can keep up the momentum. Especially since starting anything NOW, especially a brand new project, seems... y'know, kinda pointless.

But hey.

[dreamweavermode]

AMIT BHARDWAJ, THE INDIAN BITCOIN SCAM, AND THE IMPLICATIONS

We already published some in-depth reports on the Indian US$ 300 million crypto-scam around the Indian entrepreneur Amit BHARDWAJ who was imprisoned some weeks ago. In the aftermath of the scam’s collapse the Indian Enforcement Directorate (ED), the intelligence agency responsible for fighting economic crimes in India, is questioning several celebrities with regards to their involvement in the crypto-scam.

BHARDWAJ founded a series of crypto-ventures such as GainBitcoin, GBMiners, and MCAP, promising a 10 times return for investors. Needless to say, none of these irrational high-return promises panned out; instead, investors ended up losing money.

The first to fall under ED’s radar is the British businessman Raj KUNDRA (who does most of his business in India). KUNDRA was questioned for eight continuous hours by ED on Tuesday, local outlet Times of India reports. Another Indian news channel reported the questioning of Kundra subsequently led to more celebrities, who purportedly promoted GBMiners at various events in Dubai and Singapore. The most prominent name on the list is Sunny LEONE, the adult film star turned Bollywood actress.

Celebrities involved in crypto-scams is not an Indian phenomenon. In the U.S some fraudulent ICO teamed up with celebrities to promote their schemes. — Floyd Mayweather, DJ Khaled, and Steven Seagal have all been there already. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) even issued a warning against celebrity-backed ICOs last December, noting that such sponsored endorsements are illegal if the celebrity fails to disclose their relationship (or stake) with the cryptocurrency.

Our team found another interesting BHARDWAJ connection. Some whistleblower reported that the German crypto-MLM scheme NEXUS GLOBAL is connected with GBMiners allegedly using their crypto-mining resources. We have already launched our investigation and will continue to report our findings.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Nick Anderson

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 1, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Dec 01, 2024

Over the holiday weekend, President-elect Trump continued to name the people he wants in his incoming administration. His picks seem designed to destroy the institutions of the democratic American state and replace those institutions with an authoritarian government whose officials are all loyal to Trump.

Congress—which represents the American people—designed governmental institutions like the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Department of Defense to support the mission of the Constitution, which is the fundamental law of the United States of America. The Constitution is not partisan, and in 1883, after a mentally ill disappointed office seeker assassinated President James A. Garfield, Congress passed a law requiring that the people who staff government offices be hired on the basis of their skills, not their partisanship.

The people who work in governmental institutions—and therefore the institutions themselves—are rather like the ballast that keeps a ship upright and balanced in different weathers. Nonpartisan government officials who clock in to do their job keep the government running smoothly and according to the law no matter whom voters elect to the presidency.

It is precisely that stability of the American state that MAGA leaders want to destroy. In their view, the modern American state has weakened the nation by trying to enforce equality for all Americans, making women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities equal to white, Christian men. But they have been unable to persuade voters to vote away the institutions that support the modern state.

Even in the 2024 campaign, voters so hated the blueprint for destroying the modern government and replacing it with a super-strong president who would impose Christian nationalism that Trump and his allies ran away from that blueprint: Project 2025.

Now, though, with Trump having won the 2024 presidential election by a razor-thin margin, MAGA leaders are claiming a mandate to destroy the American state and replace it with an authoritarian government staffed with partisans whose most obvious quality is their loyalty to Trump.

Russian specialist and military scholar Tom Nichols of The Atlantic notes that the Russians talk about “power ministries,” which are “the departments that have significant legal and coercive capacity.” Nichols notes that in the U.S., those include the Justice Department, the Defense Department, the FBI, and the intelligence community, all of which Trump is attempting to destroy by placing unqualified loyalists at their head.

For the crucially important post of attorney general, who is responsible for overseeing the enforcement of the rule of law across the nation, Trump first tapped former Florida representative Matt Gaetz, whose association with drug use and sex trafficking forced him to withdraw, and then named Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general who has insisted that the legal cases against Trump are proof that the justice system has been “weaponized” against Trump.

To head the FBI, the bureau Trump has long insisted was persecuting him through its investigation of the ties between his 2016 campaign and Russian operatives—ties that Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee have confirmed in detail—Trump has tapped loyalist and conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, who has vowed to use the FBI to exact revenge on those Trump considers his enemies.

That Patel’s appointment is designed to destroy the FBI is clear not least because installing him would require Trump to fire current FBI director Christoper Wray. FBI directors serve ten-year terms precisely so they are not tied to any administration, and Wray was Trump’s own appointee in his first term. Indeed, the idea that the FBI is insufficiently right wing for Trump’s new administration speaks volumes: in its entire history, the FBI has never had a Democrat in charge of it. Under Patel, the nation’s chief law enforcement agency would be a tool of the president.

For director of the CIA, Trump has tapped unqualified loyalist attack dog John Ratcliffe; for director of national intelligence, the person who oversees all American intelligence agencies, Trump has tapped former representative Tulsi Gabbard, whose ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin and Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad make her loyalties suspect. Taken together, Trump’s appointments to these powerful departments amount to an attempt to destroy the nation’s fundamental institutions.

As Charlie Sykes points out, Trump’s appointments are not only a “[m]assive Fuq U to institutions…[b]ut also a huge FU to the Supreme Court because Trump doesn’t think they will be a check on his campaign of lawless retribution.”

The Atlantic’s Nichols told MSNBC today that Trump’s appointees are “there to build an authoritarian cadre and to put themselves beyond the reach of the rule of law.”

With loyalty trumping ability and merit under an autocrat, the quality of government officials plummets. This pays off for an autocratic leader because those appointed to serve in an autocratic government are usually unemployable in a merit-based system, making them fiercely loyal to the leader who has elevated them beyond their abilities.

Autocrats start by rewarding family, and Trump has certainly followed that suit. After years in which Republicans went after President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who was never a government employee, over the weekend, Trump announced that he intends to appoint his daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law, New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner, as ambassador to France. In 2004, Kushner pleaded guilty to 16 federal crimes and served time in prison before Trump pardoned him in 2020. Trump also announced that he will appoint his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, Lebanese-born billionaire Massad Boulos, as White House senior adviser on Arab and Middle East affairs.

This weekend, an email from the mother of Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, came to light. Written in 2018, when Hegseth was in the middle of a divorce from his second wife, who filed for divorce after Hegseth got a co-worker pregnant, the email told Hegseth to “get some help and take an honest look at yourself.” Writing “[o]n behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way,” Penelope Hegseth said: “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”

Penelope Hegseth has since praised her son.

Meanwhile, those loyal to a rising regime attack public servants to make others afraid to speak out. On Friday, billionaire Elon Musk posted on X that Alexander Vindman, former National Security Council director for European affairs, is “on the payroll of Ukrainian oligarchs and has committed treason against the United States, for which he will pay the appropriate penalty.” Vindman was a key figure in Trump’s first impeachment after being on the phone call in which Trump tried to get Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to smear the Democratic opponent he considered most dangerous to his reelection prospects, then–former vice president Joe Biden, before Trump would release money Congress had appropriated for Ukraine’s defense against Russian incursions.

But Vindman, who famously told Congress that he had assured his father that he was safe speaking up against the president because “here, right matters,” wasn’t taking such an attack quietly.

“Elon, here you go again making false and completely unfounded accusations without providing any specifics,” Vindman posted back. “That’s the kind of response one would expect from a conspiracy theorist. What oligarch? What treason?

“Let me help you out with the facts: I don’t take/have never taken money from any money from oligarchs Ukrainian or…otherwise.

“I do run a nonprofit foundation. The HereRightMattersFoundation.org to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s unprovoked attack on Feb 24, 2022. I served in the military for nearly 22 years and my loyalty is to supporting the U.S. Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. That’s why I reported presidential corruption when I witnessed an effort to steal an election. That report was in classified channels and when called by Congress to testify about presidential corruption I did so, as required by law.

“You, Elon, appear to believe you can act with impunity and are attempting to silence your critics. I’m not intimidated.”

As Trump sets out to turn the government into an instrument for his own power and vengeance, President Biden tonight pardoned his son Hunter Biden. Laying out the history of Republicans’ persecution of Hunter to weaken his father, the president said in a statement, “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son—and that is wrong.... [A]nd there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough…. I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice…. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mariacallous]

Anti-immigrant rhetoric in the United States is fueling a surge in violent threats against federal judges and other government officials, intelligence officials say, imperiling security operations at the US border and putting law enforcement lives at risk.

While threats from violent extremists against migrants, elected officials, and border security personnel have been on the rise for years, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memo from May, first reported by WIRED, violent threats against federal judges and other court officers in immigration cases are soaring for the first time.

“Individuals self-identifying as militia members have posted names and photos of officers on social media, calling them ‘traitors’ in reaction to perceptions of their work along the US-Mexico border,” the report says, noting that the threats have included calls for attacks on “migrants and buildings using explosives” as well.

The documents were first obtained by Property of the People, a nonprofit focused on transparency and national security. In a comment to WIRED, a DHS spokesperson said the agency continues to advise federal, state, and local partners to remain vigilant to potential threats and encourages the public to report any suspicious activity to local authorities.

“Perceptions of government inadequacy related to immigration policy, and narratives describing immigration as an ‘invasion,’ remain a consistent driver for some individuals calling for violence against migrants and government personnel,” the memo says. While acknowledging a “heightened threat environment” around the presidential race, DHS avoids associating the claims of a “migrant invasion” with any particular party or figure.

However, Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric has grown increasingly targeted and racist since the start of the 2024 campaign, as the former president has accused immigrants of “poisoning the blood” of the country and being hereditarily predisposed to murder. The former president has called recent immigration “the greatest invasion in history,” as Trump and his surrogates have continued pushing the great replacement theory, a racist fiction of a “migrant invasion” being purposefully whipped up by societal elites, with their goal being to dilute the political power of white Americans. Some iterations of the great replacement theory also blame Jewish people for orchestrating this “invasion.”

“We all know what it means when political leaders vilify groups as vermin, as marauding invaders, as poisoning the nation’s blood,” says Ryan Shapiro, executive director at Property of the People. “Donald Trump is unambiguously stoking racial violence. The documents show his followers are listening.”

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court’s ruling that the federal government—not Texas —had ultimate authority over border enforcement led to a tense standoff, which turbocharged violent rhetoric and civil war fantasies online. That ruling, which DHS cited as a driver behind the uptick in anti-immigration threats, drew an array of extremists who traveled convoy style to the border to “support” Texas law enforcement. As that was playing out, FBI agents said they disrupted a plot by militiamen to shoot border patrol agents and immigrants and “start a war.”

And last month, Trump and his running mate, senator JD Vance of Ohio, pounced on a debunked story, stemming from a rumor on Facebook, claiming that Haitian migrants were stealing and eating people’s pets in the town of Springfield, Ohio. City officials were bombarded by hoax bomb threats and death threats, forcing some schools and municipal buildings to temporarily shut down. Proud Boys and Neo-Nazis from the group Blood Tribe also paraded through Springfield.

“We’ve certainly seen in the last couple years the spike in threats from anti-immigrant extremists,” says Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s program on extremism. “We see this as one of the easiest mobilizing concepts for the right-wing ecosystem … it certainly shouldn't be a surprise that we see the foot soldiers mobilizing in response to these repeated calls to arms.”

The intel fits into a broader trend of the right-wing—which was once typically supportive of all law enforcement—villainizing certain agencies. For example, the FBI has been targeted with threats for its involvement in January 6 prosecutions.

Recently released FBI data also shows that hate crimes targeting Latinos—who have been broadly scapegoated by anti-immigrant “invasion” rhetoric—also surged by 11 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, continuing a disturbing years-long upwards trend.

Anti-immigrant sentiment is driving threats against "critical government infrastructure," and leading to US officials being targeted in their homes, according to another security memo, authored in April. Violent threats against "all immigration-related targets" had tripled in January compared to previous months, the memo said. In April, several immigration-related court rulings reportedly caused a spike in calls for the "mass murder of US judges."

"Many groups working on immigration rights and advocacy in recent years have been raising the alarm in terms of this nativist rhetoric," says Jesse Franzblau, a senior analyst at the National Immigration Justice Center. "Particularly from members of Congress."

"It's nothing new," Franzblau says, "blaming immigrants for the social ills of the country. But it has grown to a new extreme and it seems more coordinated. There's a lot of money going into developing these talking points, and pushing these completely dangerous narratives about immigrant communities." There’s broad consensus among economists that immigration, in the long-term, revitalizes local economies.

DHS projects that overall threats against court officers and court facilities will remain on the rise throughout 2025, the memos show. Those targeting federal judges rose 52 percent last year, one memo says, while threats against court officers effectively doubled.

"Threat actors include domestic violent extremists (DVEs) motivated by political and policy-related grievances and criminal actors who threaten critical government infrastructure and personnel, both at their workplaces and private residences," it says, adding that incidents involving "hoaxes," "swatting," and "doxing" have affected a "wide array of federal and state judicial figures."

The April memo also credits “immigration-related grievances” with a "spate of swatting incidents" against members of Congress earlier this year, capping off a 7 percent increase in investigations by Capitol Police into threats to US officials.

[maheshwarico]

India’s Anti-Money Laundering Laws

India’s approach to anti-money laundering (AML) is heavily shaped by the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) of 2002, which forms the core framework against laundering activities in the country. 

Under the PMLA, enacted to detect and control money laundering, financial entities must keep records of all transactions—whether suspected or confirmed—to prevent the integration of illicit funds into the economy. This act also mandates institutions to report transactions that appear suspicious and empowers authorities to seize assets linked to money laundering activities.

The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU-IND), established under the PMLA, serves as the primary body tasked with investigating and reporting suspicious financial activity. Another key player is the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which enforces provisions of the PMLA and acts in tandem with regulatory frameworks of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). 

India’s AML framework is further bolstered by its membership in the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) since 2010, which involves aligning national policies with international AML standards. Continuous compliance—like conducting periodic customer due diligence and identifying and reporting high-risk customers—is required from all financial institutions. 

Evolution and Key Provisions of Anti-Money Laundering Laws

India’s anti-money laundering regime has steadily evolved, incorporating robust measures to combat both traditional and emerging forms of money laundering. The Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, which took effect in 2005, remains the backbone of the legal framework against money laundering. 

Its primary objectives include preventing the use of illegal funds, confiscating assets obtained unlawfully, and enabling prosecution against offenders. Under Section 3 of the PMLA, money laundering is defined broadly to cover various activities related to the concealment, acquisition, or use of money obtained illegally.

Significant amendments to the PMLA over the years have strengthened its reach. For instance, in 2019, an amendment allowed more extensive powers for the seizure of assets outside of India, reflecting the need to address the global nature of money laundering. 

Moreover, compliance requirements have expanded, covering sectors such as housing finance, stock exchanges and cooperative banks, which now have to maintain a record of all major and suspicious transactions.

India’s increasing digitalization has also led to more stringent requirements for online financial transactions and cross-border exchanges. As per the Financial Intelligence Unit-India (FIU-IND), financial institutions are required to implement comprehensive Know Your Customer (KYC) protocols, report any unusual transaction activities, and ensure that they are compliant with both domestic laws and international standards. 

Through such regulations, the government continues to adapt to prevent the laundering of funds within a global digital economy​

Compliance Challenges and Enforcement Mechanisms

India’s anti-money laundering framework, though stringent, faces notable challenges in enforcement. The broad scope of Anti-Money Laundering Laws aims to cover various forms of illicit financial activities; however, financial institutions and businesses often find compliance challenging due to frequent updates to laws and extensive reporting obligations. 

For instance, the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) requires companies to regularly update KYC (Know Your Customer) data, a time-consuming task for institutions dealing with high volumes of transactions.

To support effective enforcement, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has been empowered with robust investigative and seizure rights. Recent amendments now allow the ED to attach and confiscate assets located outside India, an essential measure given the international reach of laundering networks. Despite this, limitations persist—particularly when it comes to coordinating with foreign entities to track international funds. 

Additionally, businesses sometimes grapple with the costs associated with implementing compliance systems, hiring trained personnel, and maintaining high-tech monitoring tools necessary for effective anti-money laundering (AML) protocols.

Further complicating matters are rapidly evolving money laundering tactics, often leveraging cryptocurrency and other digital means to obscure money trails. To address this, the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) collaborates with global agencies to strengthen tracking capabilities and update AML requirements. As financial transactions shift further into the digital space, the need for technology-driven AML solutions and rigorous training for compliance staff is more vital than ever to stay ahead of sophisticated laundering strategies​

Landmark Cases and Global Cooperation on Anti-Money Laundering

India’s judiciary has played a key role in defining the reach and application of Anti-Money Laundering Laws through several landmark cases. 

For instance, in the Enforcement Directorate vs. Hasan Ali Khan case, the Supreme Court allowed more extensive powers for investigating agencies under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), affirming the Act’s broad interpretation and clarifying that the possession of unexplained wealth could fall within its ambit. 

Similarly, in the INX Media Case, authorities highlighted the importance of documenting financial transactions thoroughly to ensure transparency and compliance with AML regulations. The INX Media ruling emphasized that willful omission of financial disclosures could be sufficient grounds for prosecution under the PMLA.

To further enhance its effectiveness, India has been actively cooperating with international bodies such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units, facilitating the exchange of information to counter cross-border money laundering schemes. 

This global cooperation has enabled Indian agencies to trace illicit financial flows that traverse international borders, a critical measure as laundering networks increasingly use overseas entities and tax havens to obscure illegal wealth.

Future of Anti-Money Laundering Laws in India

The future of India’s Anti-Money Laundering Laws lies in technological advancements and enhanced regulatory measures. With increasing reliance on digital platforms for financial transactions, the Indian government is set to introduce more robust compliance protocols to address vulnerabilities in online and mobile banking channels. New amendments are anticipated to improve transparency, making it mandatory for financial entities to use data-driven tools for real-time transaction monitoring. This could revolutionize compliance by ensuring that high-risk transactions are flagged immediately.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will likely play a critical role in combating money laundering. These technologies enable financial institutions to identify unusual transaction patterns efficiently, ensuring compliance with both domestic and international standards. 

Further, as cryptocurrencies grow in popularity, India’s AML framework is expected to adapt to address risks posed by digital assets. The government has shown signs of regulating digital currencies under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to prevent anonymous fund transfers and to track illicit activity.

Global cooperation will continue to be a cornerstone of India’s AML strategy. Collaborations with international bodies such as the FATF and INTERPOL will allow India to stay aligned with global best practices and tackle cross-border money laundering schemes more effectively. 

By evolving its AML laws to incorporate technology and international cooperation, India is better positioned to ensure economic integrity and prevent illicit funds from entering the legal financial system

Conclusion

India’s Anti-Money Laundering Laws have developed a dynamic and increasingly sophisticated framework to address the evolving challenges of financial crimes. Through amendments to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and participation in international partnerships, India continues to reinforce its commitment to combating money laundering on both a national and global scale. 

As these laws evolve, India aims not only to mitigate risks posed by domestic money laundering schemes but also to safeguard its financial system from international laundering networks that threaten economic stability.

Choosing MAHESHWARI & CO. for Anti-Money Laundering Compliance

MAHESHWARI & CO. offers expert guidance in navigating Anti-Money Laundering Laws in India, providing comprehensive advisory and compliance support tailored to each client’s needs. With a team experienced in handling complex AML cases, including regulatory compliance, risk assessment, and representation before enforcement authorities, MAHESHWARI & CO. ensures that clients stay compliant and secure in an ever-evolving regulatory environment.

[yourreddancer]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON 12.1.24

Over the holiday weekend, President-elect Trump continued to name the people he wants in his incoming administration. His picks seem designed to destroy the institutions of the democratic American state and replace those institutions with an authoritarian government whose officials are all loyal to Trump.

Congress—which represents the American people—designed governmental institutions like the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Department of Defense to support the mission of the Constitution, which is the fundamental law of the United States of America. The Constitution is not partisan, and in 1883, after a mentally ill disappointed office seeker assassinated President James A. Garfield, Congress passed a law requiring that the people who staff government offices be hired on the basis of their skills, not their partisanship.

The people who work in governmental institutions—and therefore the institutions themselves—are rather like the ballast that keeps a ship upright and balanced in different weathers. Nonpartisan government officials who clock in to do their job keep the government running smoothly and according to the law no matter whom voters elect to the presidency.

It is precisely that stability of the American state that MAGA leaders want to destroy. In their view, the modern American state has weakened the nation by trying to enforce equality for all Americans, making women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and racial, ethnic, and religious minorities equal to white, Christian men. But they have been unable to persuade voters to vote away the institutions that support the modern state.

Even in the 2024 campaign, voters so hated the blueprint for destroying the modern government and replacing it with a super-strong president who would impose Christian nationalism that Trump and his allies ran away from that blueprint: Project 2025.

Now, though, with Trump having won the 2024 presidential election by a razor-thin margin, MAGA leaders are claiming a mandate to destroy the American state and replace it with an authoritarian government staffed with partisans whose most obvious quality is their loyalty to Trump.

Russian specialist and military scholar Tom Nichols of The Atlantic notes that the Russians talk about “power ministries,” which are “the departments that have significant legal and coercive capacity.” Nichols notes that in the U.S., those include the Justice Department, the Defense Department, the FBI, and the intelligence community, all of which Trump is attempting to destroy by placing unqualified loyalists at their head.

For the crucially important post of attorney general, who is responsible for overseeing the enforcement of the rule of law across the nation, Trump first tapped former Florida representative Matt Gaetz, whose association with drug use and sex trafficking forced him to withdraw, and then named Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general who has insisted that the legal cases against Trump are proof that the justice system has been “weaponized” against Trump.

To head the FBI, the bureau Trump has long insisted was persecuting him through its investigation of the ties between his 2016 campaign and Russian operatives—ties that Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee have confirmed in detail—Trump has tapped loyalist and conspiracy theorist Kash Patel, who has vowed to use the FBI to exact revenge on those Trump considers his enemies.

That Patel’s appointment is designed to destroy the FBI is clear not least because installing him would require Trump to fire current FBI director Christoper Wray. FBI directors serve ten-year terms precisely so they are not tied to any administration, and Wray was Trump’s own appointee in his first term. Indeed, the idea that the FBI is insufficiently right wing for Trump’s new administration speaks volumes: in its entire history, the FBI has never had a Democrat in charge of it. Under Patel, the nation’s chief law enforcement agency would be a tool of the president.

For director of the CIA, Trump has tapped unqualified loyalist attack dog John Ratcliffe; for director of national intelligence, the person who oversees all American intelligence agencies, Trump has tapped former representative Tulsi Gabbard, whose ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin and Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad make her loyalties suspect. Taken together, Trump’s appointments to these powerful departments amount to an attempt to destroy the nation’s fundamental institutions.

As Charlie Sykes points out, Trump’s appointments are not only a “[m]assive Fuq U to institutions…[b]ut also a huge FU to the Supreme Court because Trump doesn’t think they will be a check on his campaign of lawless retribution.”

The Atlantic’s Nichols told MSNBC today that Trump’s appointees are “there to build an authoritarian cadre and to put themselves beyond the reach of the rule of law.”

With loyalty trumping ability and merit under an autocrat, the quality of government officials plummets. This pays off for an autocratic leader because those appointed to serve in an autocratic government are usually unemployable in a merit-based system, making them fiercely loyal to the leader who has elevated them beyond their abilities.

Autocrats start by rewarding family, and Trump has certainly followed that suit. After years in which Republicans went after President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who was never a government employee, over the weekend, Trump announced that he intends to appoint his daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law, New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner, as ambassador to France. In 2004, Kushner pleaded guilty to 16 federal crimes and served time in prison before Trump pardoned him in 2020. Trump also announced that he will appoint his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, Lebanese-born billionaire Massad Boulos, as White House senior adviser on Arab and Middle East affairs.

This weekend, an email from the mother of Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, came to light. Written in 2018, when Hegseth was in the middle of a divorce from his second wife, who filed for divorce after Hegseth got a co-worker pregnant, the email told Hegseth to “get some help and take an honest look at yourself.” Writing “[o]n behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way,” Penelope Hegseth said: “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”

Penelope Hegseth has since praised her son.

Meanwhile, those loyal to a rising regime attack public servants to make others afraid to speak out. On Friday, billionaire Elon Musk posted on X that Alexander Vindman, former National Security Council director for European affairs, is “on the payroll of Ukrainian oligarchs and has committed treason against the United States, for which he will pay the appropriate penalty.” Vindman was a key figure in Trump’s first impeachment after being on the phone call in which Trump tried to get Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to smear the Democratic opponent he considered most dangerous to his reelection prospects, then–former vice president Joe Biden, before Trump would release money Congress had appropriated for Ukraine’s defense against Russian incursions.

But Vindman, who famously told Congress that he had assured his father that he was safe speaking up against the president because “here, right matters,” wasn’t taking such an attack quietly.

“Elon, here you go again making false and completely unfounded accusations without providing any specifics,” Vindman posted back. “That’s the kind of response one would expect from a conspiracy theorist. What oligarch? What treason?

“Let me help you out with the facts: I don’t take/have never taken money from any money from oligarchs Ukrainian or…otherwise.

“I do run a nonprofit foundation. The HereRightMattersFoundation.org to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s unprovoked attack on Feb 24, 2022. I served in the military for nearly 22 years and my loyalty is to supporting the U.S. Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. That’s why I reported presidential corruption when I witnessed an effort to steal an election. That report was in classified channels and when called by Congress to testify about presidential corruption I did so, as required by law.

“You, Elon, appear to believe you can act with impunity and are attempting to silence your critics. I’m not intimidated.”

As Trump sets out to turn the government into an instrument for his own power and vengeance, President Biden tonight pardoned his son Hunter Biden. Laying out the history of Republicans’ persecution of Hunter to weaken his father, the president said in a statement, “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son—and that is wrong.... [A]nd there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough…. I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice…. I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.”