- Finance Job Vacancies In London Collapse
Finance Job Vacancies In London Collapse
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/20/2020 – 02:45As if European banks did not have enough on their plates, with diving profitability in a prolonged period of zero or negative interest rates, along with rising NPLs, the virus pandemic has accelerated the plunge into the abyss, which as of recent, has resulted in a collapse in finance job vacancies and industrywide job cuts.
Bloomberg, citing a new report via recruitment firm Morgan McKinley, said job vacancies in London’s finance industry were more than halved in the third quarter compared with 2019. The report said coronavirus, Brexit, and bank profits discouraged many of the top banks situated in the financial district to hire in the third quarter – as many also reduced their workforce.
Morgan McKinley showed only 3,800 finance position openings were offered in the three months through September, a sharp drop of 4,500 openings from 8,300 compared with the quarter last year, representing a 54% decline.
Hakan Enver, managing director at Morgan McKinley U.K., said, “businesses and job seekers were struggling with the impact of the pandemic and worried about what a second wave will mean.”
“But we also can’t forget about Brexit. There are concerns for the long-term recovery and the free flow of capital and equivalence for U.K. financial services that need to be clarified,” Enver said.
The plunge in London third-quarter finance position openings comes as big banks such as Citi, Wells Fargo, HSBC, and Deutsche Bank reduce their workforce to the tune of 64,000 this year. The number of job cuts could be on pace to surpass 78,000 bank jobs lost last year and could soon hone in on the 94,100 cuts seen in 2015.
The coronavirus pandemic has halved the FTSE U.K. bank equity since the start of the pandemic.
Andrea Enria, chair of the ECB’s supervisory board, recently told the German business daily Handelsblatt that a second wave of the virus pandemic could spark another surge of bad loans.
Rating agency S&P has remained vocal about the European bank debacle, warning corporate default rates would more than double over the next nine months to 8.5% from 3.8%.
Europe’s financial system is hanging on by a thread. Another round of the pandemic could doom the continent’s banking industry; nevertheless, bankers at Barclays, Deutsche Bank, and SocGen will be unhappy this year as their bonuses are set to slump because of the virus-induced downturn.
- France: Death To Free Speech
France: Death To Free Speech
Tyler Durden
Tue, 10/20/2020 – 02:00Authored by Guy Millière via The Gatestone Institute,
Paris, October 16. A history teacher who had shown his students cartoons of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad and had spoken with them about freedom of speech was beheaded in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a small town in the suburbs of Paris. The murderer, who tried to attack the police attempting to arrest him, was shot and killed while shouting “Allahu Akbar”. According to the public prosecutor, he was a family member of one of the students. The facts are still unfolding….
A few weeks before that, on September 25, Zaheer Hassan Mehmood, a 25-year-old Pakistani man, attacked and seriously injured two people with a cleaver. When he tried to escape, he was arrested by police. He had entered France illegally in 2018, had appeared before a judge to ask for asylum and to benefit from the status of an “isolated minor”. The information he gave the judge was false: he had said he was 18 years old. The judge accepted his request and refused any method of determining his real age. Since then, Mehmood has been financially supported by the French government. It gave him housing, training and a monthly allowance.
Just before the attack, Mehmood posted a video on a social network in which he tried to justify his act. He wanted, he said, to kill people working for the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo because it had republished the cartoons that had triggered the murderous attack on the magazine in January 2015. He wanted, he said, to avenge the offense done to the Prophet Muhammad. He stated his allegiance to Ilyas Qadri, founder of Dawat-e-Islami, a Sufi movement that claims to condemn violence, even though its members have nevertheless murdered people they accused of blasphemy.
In September, Mehmood had gone to the magazine’s old address. The people he injured were not working for Charlie Hebdo, which had long since moved, but for a documentary production company. They are now disfigured for the rest of their lives.
The attack sadly shows that criticizing Islam is still an extremely dangerous activity. Anyone even suspected of doing it can be injured or killed, anytime, anywhere. It also shows that one can decide to attack or become a murderer even if one does not belong to an organization defined as jihadist, or shown no signs of radicalization. The attack once again confirms the existence of what Daniel Pipes has called “sudden jihad syndrome“.
The attack shows that, in addition, France, like other Western countries, is abysmally lax in guiding those who are arriving on its soil and asking for its help. A man can lie about his age and identity without their being detected and without tighter controls. The attack shows that declaring oneself an “isolated minor” in France can be sufficient not to be observed at all and still receive full assistance from the government. The attack also suggests a disappointing grade for gratitude.
Logic would require that a defense of freedom of expression be immediately and unanimously affirmed; that the government call for vigilance in the face of extremist danger, which seems to be persistent, and that more stringent controls on those who apply for asylum be set up. None of those improvements has taken place.
On September 23, two days before Mehmood’s attack, an article purporting to defend freedom of speech was published in France by 90 newspapers. The article said that “women and men of our country have been murdered by fanatics, because of their opinions… we must join forces,” it added, “to drive away fear and make our indestructible love of freedom triumph”. The article seemed deliberately vague. It did not mention who the murderers were or what might have motivated them.
The day after the attack, several commentators counseled that in France, the love of freedom was not indestructible. They prescribed self-censorship and ventured — unfortunately “blaming the victim” — that those who had decided to republish the cartoons were the ones responsible for the attack. “When you repost cartoons”, Anne Giudicelli, a journalist, said on television, “you play into the hands of these organizations. By not saying certain things, you reduce the risks.”
“When you shock a person”, TV host Cyril Hanouna ventured, “you have to stop. Charlie Hebdo drawings pour oil on the fire”.
The persistence of Islamic danger was not mentioned, except by the journalist Éric Zemmour. Ironically, on the day of the attack, Zemmour was sentenced to a heavy fine (10,000 euros, nearly $12,000) for remarks on Islam in September 2019. He had said at the time that “Muslim foreign enclaves” exist in France. They do. At least 750 of them. He also noted that attacks in the name of Islam have not disappeared and seem likely to increase. The French justice system decided to regard these words as “incitement to hatred”.
After the cleaver attack, no one requested tightening controls on asylum seekers, except, again, Zemmour. He said that “the uncontrolled presence of unaccompanied minors on the French territory is a very serious problem” and that “we must no longer welcome unaccompanied minors in France as long as drastic controls are not put in place”. He recalled that many self-proclaimed unaccompanied minors lie about their age, commit crimes, and turn out to be “thieves and assassins”.
His words immediately caused a massive scandal. Even though he did not say a single word about race or religion, dozens of complaints were lodged against him by “anti-racist associations”, and the French Ministry of Justice robotically opened another investigation against him for “incitement to racial hatred” and “Islamophobic prejudice”. He will most likely again be condemned by the courts.
Facts, however, prove Zemmour is right. The National Observatory of Delinquency and Penal Responses (ONDRP), an organization that analyzes crime in France, recently published reports noting that 60% of assaults, murders and violent robberies committed in France in 2019 were indeed committed by “unaccompanied minors”. ONDPR published still another study, disclosing that, on average, 120 knife attacks per day occur in France and that those attacks are committed by “unaccompanied minors” or “refugees” coming from the Muslim world.
In addition, France’s Directorate-General for Internal Security (DGSI) reported a few weeks ago, that, since January 2015, 59 Islamist attacks have been thwarted in France. Those, of course, not thwarted include the attack against Charlie Hebdo; the murders the same day in a kosher supermarket; a mass murder in the Bataclan Theater; the murder of Arnaud Beltrame, who took a bullet to shield others; the murders of Fr. Jacques Hamel; of schoolchildren and others in Toulouse, of elderly Jews in Paris, and of at least 84 people watching fireworks in Nice. These attacks were all committed by French Muslims or Muslims legally present in France.
French laws currently make it possible to prosecute just about anything regarded as “incitement to discrimination, hatred or violence against a person or a group of people because of their origin or their belonging to an ethnic group, a nation, a race or a religion.” An openly Marxist organization of judges, the Judiciary Union (Syndicat de la magistrature), has steadily gained influence and uses applicable laws to suppress any criticism of either Islam or immigration. They work together with organizations such as SOS Racism, founded in 1984 by members to the left of the Socialist Party; the Movement against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples (MRAP), created in 1949 by members of the French Communist Party (the MRAP was initially called Movement Against Racism, anti-Semitism and for Peace, and removed “anti-Semitism and for Peace” from its name in 1989, when it devoted itself almost entirely to the fight “Islamophobic racism“); the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), created in 2003 by members of the Union of Islamic Organizations of France (UOIF), the French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Coordination Against Racism and Islamophobia (CRI), created in 2009.
Any criticism of Islam in France can lead to legal action. The French mainstream media, threatened with prosecution by their own government, have evidently decided no longer to invite on air anyone likely to make comments that could lead to convictions or complaints. Zemmour might still appear on television, but the increasingly heavy fines imposed on him are aimed at silencing him and potentially punishing stations that invite him.
No French political leader dares to say what he says, not even Marine Le Pen. She has been condemned several times by the French judicial system, and, as in the former Soviet Union, ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation for having shown the public what ISIS was doing to “disbelievers”. She has evidently now decided to be “careful”.
The French authorities continue to ignore most of the violent attacks committed in the name of Islam. When they occurred — against a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012, or against Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket 2015, or at the Bataclan Theater in 2015, or by the truck-ramming in Nice in 2016 — the country’s leaders promised “firmness” but delivered nothing.
A week after the September 25 attack, French President Emmanuel Macron again delivered a speech that pledged “firmness”. He denounced “Islamic separatism” and the “Islamic indoctrination” practiced by radical preachers. He said he would fight terrorism and “liberate French Islam from foreign influences” and that in French schools and universities, he would “strengthen the teaching of Islamic civilization” and “teaching the Arabic language“. He said nothing that he has not said before. Seven months ago, on February 18, he gave almost the identical speech in Alsace.
Ibrahim Mounir, spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe, nevertheless accused Macron of “hurting the feelings of more than two billion Muslims” and of “acting deliberately to incite Muslims to renounce their religion”. He added: “The beliefs of the Muslim Brotherhood have always been able to overcome the mistakes of regimes using illegal and inhuman abuses to distort our religion”. Manon Aubry, MEP from the leftist party Rebellious France, commented that “Macron obsessively wants to stigmatize Muslims”.
Marine Le Pen, head of the National Rally Party, said that “Macron omitted certain subjects, probably deliberately: he said nothing on terrorism, and nothing on immigration”. She added that “massive immigration is the breeding ground of communitarianism [empowering groups rather than individuals], which itself is the breeding ground of Islamist fundamentalism”.
The journalist Celine Pina noted that Macron did not speak about the status of asylum seekers. “Once again,” she wrote, “Macron refuses really to tackle the causes of the problems that the French suffer. The government fights terrorism by pretending not to see the link between the propaganda of political Islam and the proliferation of violent acts”.
Columnist Ivan Rioufol wrote that “the measures Macron is advocating do not respond at all to the urgency of the threat.”
Jean Messiha, a senior civil servant of Coptic Christian origin and member of the National Rally party, noted that “Islam does not seek to separate but to conquer”. He added that “speaking of an Islam of France dissociated from Islam itself does not make any sense”. As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan correctly noted, “There is no extremist Islam or moderate Islam; Islam is Islam and that’s it”.
Messiha also suggested that “strengthening the teaching of Islamic civilization is not a priority at a moment when so many young French people no longer know what French civilization is”, and that “strengthening the teaching of Arabic will simply help to nourish ‘cultural replacement'”.
France is now the European country with the largest Muslim population (around six million, or nearly 10% of the total population); each year, moreover, thousand more people from the Muslim world arrive in France. Most of the Muslims living in France today reside in Muslim neighborhoods from which most non-Muslims have fled.
A 2016 study showed that 29% of Muslims living in France believe that Islamic law is superior to French law, and that they must first and foremost obey the laws of Islam. A recent study shows that four years later, the situation has only worsened. Now, 40% of Muslims living in France believe that Islamic law is superior to French law. Eighteen percent of French Muslims also apparently think that the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo in 2015 was justified. Among Muslims between the ages of 18- 25, that number rises to 26%.
Studies show that if migratory flows continue at the current pace, France could become a Muslim-majority country within 30 to 40 years. Other European countries are moving in the same direction; their leaders are behaving no more courageously than French leaders are. Censorship against anti-Islamic statements is increasing rapidly across the continent.
Abdelaziz Chaambi, director of the group Coordination Against Racism and Islamophobia, recently said that “the data shows that France will be Muslim in a few decades… Islam is the second religion, the second community in France, and those who do not like Muslims have to leave France”.
At the end of the speech that earned Zemmour his September 25 court sentence, he told the French, “You are right to be afraid”.
A trial is now underway in Paris for those who attacked Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket in 2015. The trial, however, is largely meaningless. All the terrorists are dead. The defendants are simply people who provided weapons or shelter to the terrorists. It is easy for them to say they did not know whom they were hosting or for what the weapons were intended. They have even said that they do not know anything about jihad.
Commenting on a news report that stated, “The trial has sparked protests across France, with thousands of demonstrators rallying against Charlie Hebdo and the French government,” the American attorney and commentator, John Hinderaker, wrote: “When thousands demonstrate against the prosecution of alleged murderers, you know you have a problem.”
On October 9, Macron announced that he had secured the release of a woman held hostage by a jihadist group in Mali. The release was obtained in exchange for a ransom of $12 million and the freeing of 200 jihadists ready to return to combat against the French military. The hostage, Sophie Petronin, a 75-year-old aid worker, said she converted to Islam, that her name is now Myriam, and that she wants to quickly go back to Mali to live among jihadists. She said she understands why the jihadists fight the French army. France is officially at war with the jihadists in Mali. Macron, it seems, has an oddball, idiosyncratic way of waging war.
This is not the first time that France has paid a ransom — a practice many countries emphatically reject because it only invites more hostage-taking. Between 2008-2014, to free hostages, France has paid $58 million, more than any other country. Where does one sign up?
- Treason In America: An Overview Of The FBI, CIA, And Matters Of "National Security"
Treason In America: An Overview Of The FBI, CIA, And Matters Of “National Security”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 23:40Authored by Cynthia Chung via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
“Treason doth never prosper; what is the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
– Sir John Harrington.
As Shakespeare would state in his play Hamlet, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,” like a fish that rots from head to tail, so do corrupt government systems rot from top to bottom.
This is a reference to the ruling system of Denmark and not just the foul murder that King Claudius has committed against his brother, Hamlet’s father. This is showcased in the play by reference to the economy of Denmark being in a state of shambles and that the Danish people are ready to revolt since they are on the verge of starving. King Claudius has only been king for a couple of months, and thus this state of affairs, though he inflames, did not originate with him.
Thus, during our time of great upheaval we should ask ourselves; what constitutes the persisting “ruling system,” of the United States, and where do the injustices in its state of affairs truly originate from?
The tragedy of Hamlet does not just lie in the action (or lack of action) of one man, but rather, it is contained in the choices and actions of all its main characters. Each character fails to see the longer term consequences of their own actions, which leads not only to their ruin but towards the ultimate collapse of Denmark. The characters are so caught up in their antagonism against one another that they fail to foresee that their very own destruction is intertwined with the other.
This is a reflection of a failing system.
A system that, though it believes itself to be fighting tooth and nail for its very survival, is only digging a deeper grave. A system that is incapable of generating any real solutions to the problems it faces.
The only way out of this is to address that very fact. The most important issue that will decide the fate of the country is what sort of changes are going to occur in the political and intelligence apparatus, such that a continuation of this tyrannical treason is finally stopped in its tracks and unable to sow further discord and chaos.
When the Matter of “Truth” Becomes a Threat to “National Security”
When the matter of truth is depicted as a possible threat to those that govern a country, you no longer have a democratic state. True, not everything can be disclosed to the public in real time, but we are sitting on a mountain of classified intelligence material that goes back more than 60 years.
How much time needs to elapse before the American people have the right to know the truth behind what their government agencies have been doing within their own country and abroad in the name of the “free” world?
From this recognition, the whole matter of declassifying material around the Russigate scandal in real time, and not highly redacted 50 years from now, is essential to addressing this festering putrefaction that has been bubbling over since the heinous assassination of President Kennedy on Nov. 22nd, 1963 and to which we are still waiting for full disclosure of classified papers 57 years later.
If the American people really want to finally see who is standing behind that curtain in Oz, now is the time.
These intelligence bureaus need to be reviewed for what kind of method and standard they are upholding in collecting their “intelligence,” that has supposedly justified the Mueller investigation and the never-ending Flynn investigation which have provided zero conclusive evidence to back up their allegations and which have massively infringed on the elected government’s ability to make the changes that they had committed to the American people.
Just like the Iraq and Libya war that was based off of cooked British intelligence (refer here and here), Russiagate appears to have also had its impetus from our friends over at MI6 as well. It is no surprise that Sir Richard Dearlove, who was then MI6 chief (1999-2004) and who oversaw and stood by the fraudulent intelligence on Iraq stating they bought uranium from Niger to build a nuclear weapon, is the very same Sir Richard Dearlove who promoted the Christopher Steele dossier as something “credible” to American intelligence.
In other words, the same man who is largely responsible for encouraging the illegal invasion of Iraq, which set off the never-ending wars on “terror,” that was justified with cooked British intelligence is also responsible for encouraging the Russian spook witch-hunt that has been occurring within the U.S. for the last four years…over more cooked British intelligence, and the FBI and CIA are knowingly complicit in this.
Neither the American people, nor the world as a whole, can afford to suffer any more of the so-called “mistaken” intelligence bumblings. It is time that these intelligence bureaus are held accountable for at best criminal negligence, at worst, treason against their own country.
When Great Figures of Hope Are Targeted as Threats to “National Security”
The Family Jewels report, which was an investigation conducted by the CIA to investigate itself, was spurred by the Watergate Scandal and the CIA’s unconstitutional role in the whole affair. This investigation by the CIA reviewed its own conduct from the 1950s to mid-1970s.
The Family Jewels report was only partially declassified in June 25, 2007 (30 years later). Along with the release of the redacted report included a six-page summary with the following introduction:
“The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s.” [emphasis added]
Despite this acknowledged violation of its charter for 25 years, which is pretty much since its inception, the details of this information were kept classified for 30 years from not just the public but major governmental bodies and it was left to the agency itself to judge how best to “reform” its ways.
On Dec. 22, 1974, The New York Times published an article by Seymour Hersh exposing illegal operations conducted by the CIA, dubbed the “family jewels”. This included, covert action programs involving assassination attempts on foreign leaders and covert attempts to subvert foreign governments, which were reported for the first time. In addition, the article discussed efforts by intelligence agencies to collect information on the political activities of U.S. citizens.
Largely as a reaction to Hersh’s findings, the creation of the Church Committee was approved on January 27, 1975, by a vote of 82 to 4 in the Senate.
The Church Committee’s final report was published in April 1976, including seven volumes of Church Committee hearings in the Senate.
The Church Committee also published an interim report titled “Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders”, which investigated alleged attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of Zaire, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam, Gen. René Schneider of Chile and Fidel Castro of Cuba. President Ford attempted to withhold the report from the public, but failed and reluctantly issued Executive Order 11905 after pressure from the public and the Church Committee.
Executive Order 11905 is a United States Presidential Executive Order signed on February 18, 1976, by a very reluctant President Ford in an attempt to reform the United States Intelligence Community, improve oversight on foreign intelligence activities, and ban political assassination.
The attempt is now regarded as a failure and was largely undone by President Reagan who issued Executive Order 12333, which extended the powers and responsibilities of U.S. intelligence agencies and directed leaders of the U.S. federal agencies to co-operate fully with the CIA, which was the original arrangement that CIA have full authority over clandestine operations (for more information on this refer to my papers here and here).
In addition, the Church Committee produced seven case studies on covert operations, but only the one on Chile was released, titled “Covert Action in Chile: 1963–1973“. The rest were kept secret at the CIA’s request.
Among the most shocking revelation of the Church Committee was the discovery of Operation SHAMROCK, in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA from 1945 to the early 1970s. The information gathered in this operation fed directly into the NSA Watch List. It was found out during the committee investigations that Senator Frank Church, who was overseeing the committee, was among the prominent names under surveillance on this NSA Watch List.
In 1975, the Church Committee decided to unilaterally declassify the particulars of this operation, against the objections of President Ford’s administration (refer here and here for more information).
The Church Committee’s reports constitute the most extensive review of intelligence activities ever made available to the public. Much of the contents were classified, but over 50,000 pages were declassified under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.
President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22nd, 1963. Two days before his assassination a hate-Kennedy handbill (see picture) was circulated in Dallas accusing the president of treasonous activities including being a communist sympathizer.
On March 1st, 1967 New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested and charged Clay Shaw with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy, with the help of David Ferrie and others. After a little over a one month long trial, Shaw was found not guilty on March 1st, 1969.
David Ferrie, a controller of Lee Harvey Oswald, was going to be a key witness and would have provided the ”smoking gun” evidence linking himself to Clay Shaw, was likely murdered on Feb. 22nd, 1967, less than a week after news of Garrison’s investigation broke in the media.
According to Garrison’s team findings, there was reason to believe that the CIA was involved in the orchestrations of President Kennedy’s assassination but access to classified material (which was nearly everything concerning the case) was necessary to continue such an investigation.
Though Garrison’s team lacked direct evidence, they were able to collect an immense amount of circumstantial evidence, which should have given the justification for access to classified material for further investigation. Instead the case was thrown out of court prematurely and is now treated as if it were a circus. [Refer to Garrison’s book for further details and Oliver Stone’s excellently researched movie JFK]
To date, it is the only trial to be brought forward concerning the assassination of President Kennedy.
The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) was created in 1994 by the Congress enacted President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which mandated that all assassination-related material be housed in a single collection within the National Archives and Records Administration. In July 1998, a staff report released by the ARRB emphasized shortcomings in the original autopsy.
The ARRB wrote, “One of the many tragedies of the assassination of President Kennedy has been the incompleteness of the autopsy record and the suspicion caused by the shroud of secrecy that has surrounded the records that do exist.” [emphasis added]
The staff report for the Assassinations Records Review Board contended that brain photographs in the Kennedy records are not of Kennedy’s brain and show much less damage than Kennedy sustained.
The Washington Post reported:
“Asked about the lunchroom episode [where he was overheard stating his notes of the autopsy went missing] in a May 1996 deposition, Finck said he did not remember it. He was also vague about how many notes he took during the autopsy but confirmed that “after the autopsy I also wrote notes” and that he turned over whatever notes he had to the chief autopsy physician, James J. Humes.
It has long been known that Humes destroyed some original autopsy papers in a fireplace at his home on Nov. 24, 1963. He told the Warren Commission that what he burned was an original draft of his autopsy report. Under persistent questioning at a February 1996 deposition by the Review Board, Humes said he destroyed the draft and his “original notes.”
…Shown official autopsy photographs of Kennedy from the National Archives, [Saundra K.] Spencer [who worked in “the White House lab”] said they were not the ones she helped process and were printed on different paper. She said “there was no blood or opening cavities” and the wounds were much smaller in the pictures… [than what she had] worked on…
John T. Stringer, who said he was the only one to take photos during the autopsy itself, said some of those were missing as well. He said that pictures he took of Kennedy’s brain at a “supplementary autopsy” were different from the official set that was shown to him.” [emphasis added]
This not only shows that evidence tampering did indeed occur, as even the Warren Commission acknowledges, but this puts into question the reliability of the entire assassination record of John F. Kennedy and to what degree evidence tampering and forgery have occurred in these records.
We would also do well to remember the numerous crimes that the FBI and CIA have been guilty of committing upon the American people such as during the period of McCarthyism. That the FBI’s COINTELPRO has been implicated in covert operations against members of the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1960s. That FBI director J. Edgar Hoover made no secret of his hostility towards Dr. King and his ludicrous belief that King was influenced by communists, despite having no evidence to that effect.
King was assassinated on April 4th, 1968 and the civil rights movement took a major blow.
In November 1975, as the Church Committee was completing its investigation, the Department of Justice formed a Task Force to examine the FBI’s program of harassment directed at Dr. King, including the FBI’s security investigations of him, his assassination and the FBI conducted criminal investigation that followed. One aspect of the Task force study was to determine “whether any action taken in relation to Dr. King by the FBI before the assassination had, or might have had, an effect, direct or indirect, on that event.”
In its report, the Task Force criticized the FBI not for the opening, but for the protracted continuation of, its security investigation of Dr. King:
“We think the security investigation which included both physical and technical surveillance, should have been terminated … in 1963. That it was intensified and augmented by a COINTELPRO type campaign against Dr. King was unwarranted; the COINTELPRO type campaign, moreover, was ultra vires and very probably … felonious.”
In 1999, King Family v. Jowers civil suit in Memphis, Tennessee occurred, the full transcript of the trial can be found here. The jury found that Lloyd Jowers and unnamed others, including those in high ranking positions within government agencies, participated in a conspiracy to assassinate Dr. King.
During the four week trial, it was pointed out that the rifle allegedly used to assassinate King did not have a scope that was sighted, which meant you could not have hit the broad side of a barn with that rifle, thus it could not have been the murder weapon.
This was only remarked on over 30 years after King was murdered and showed the level of incompetence, or more likely, evidence tampering that was committed from previous investigations conducted by the FBI.
The case of JFK and MLK are among the highest profile assassination cases in American history, and it has been shown in both cases that evidence tampering has indeed occurred, despite being in the center of the public eye. What are we then to expect as the standard of investigation for all the other cases of malfeasance? What expectation can we have that justice is ever upheld?
With a history of such blatant misconduct, it is clear that the present demand to declassify the Russiagate papers now, and not 50 years later, needs to occur if we are to address the level of criminality that is going on behind the scenes and which will determine the fate of the country.
The American People Deserve to Know
Today we see the continuation of the over seven decades’ long ruse, the targeting of individuals as Russian agents without any basis, in order to remove them from the political arena. The present effort to declassify the Russiagate papers and exonerate Michael Flynn, so that he may freely speak of the intelligence he knows, is not a threat to national security, it is a threat to those who have committed treason against their country.
On Oct. 6th, 2020, President Trump ordered the declassification of the Russia Probe documents along with the classified documents on the findings concerning the Hillary Clinton emails. The release of these documents threatens to expose the entrapment of the Trump campaign by the Clinton campaign with help of the U.S. intelligence agencies.
The Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe released some of these documents recently, including former CIA Director John Brennan’s handwritten notes for a meeting with former President Obama, the notes revealing that Hillary Clinton approved a plan to “vilify Donald Trump by stirring up scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”
Trey Gowdy, who was Chair of the House Oversight Committee from June 13th, 2017 – Jan. 3rd, 2019, has stated in an interview on Oct. 7th, 2020 that he has never seen these documents. Devin Nunes, who was Chair of the House Intelligence Committee from Jan. 3rd, 2015 – Jan. 3rd, 2019, has also said in a recent interview that he has never seen these documents.
And yet, both the FBI and CIA were aware and had access to these documents and sat on them for four years, withholding their release from several government-led investigations that were looking into the Russiagate scandal and who were requesting relevant material that was in the possession of both intelligence bureaus. Do these intelligence bureaus sound like they are working for the “national security” of the American people?
The truth must finally be brought to light, or the country will rot from its head to tail.
- Iran Can Now 'Legally' Sell Arms To America's Enemies With UN Embargo Lifted
Iran Can Now ‘Legally’ Sell Arms To America’s Enemies With UN Embargo Lifted
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 23:20Upon Sunday’s historic expiration of the 13-year long UN weapons embargo on Iran, the AFP and others noted that the Islamic Republic has ruled out a weapons “buying spree” at a moment Russia and China have indicated they’re quite open to selling advanced systems to Tehran.
The Foreign Ministry said of the “momentous day” on Sunday that “as of today, the Islamic Republic of Iran may procure any necessary arms and equipment from any source without any legal restrictions and solely based on its defensive needs.”
However, Iran’s Ministry of Defense has indicated it is ready and willing to sell weapons to “countries despised by the US” – as one state media headline reads. As Al Jazeera has emphasized, “The end of the embargo means Iran will legally be able to buy and sell conventional arms, including missiles, helicopters and tanks.”
Iran’s Defense Minister Brigadier General Amir Hatami inspects a domestic produced sniper rifle at an arms exhibition, via PressTV/ISNA Citing the country’s defense minister, the Iranian media report says:
Iran’s defense minister says the country is going to support the countries that seek to defend their existence now that the UN Security Council’s restrictions on Tehran’s arms trade are lifted.
Brigadier General Amir Hatami said Iran will sell arms to the countries despised by the Americans if they ask for it.
He explained in a Sunday night televised interview that “Many countries have already talked to us; we have held negotiations with some countries, and the grounds are totally prepared for exchanges [of weapons], both for selling [arms to other countries] and for supplying certain needs [buying weapons].”
“Of course our sales will be much more extensive than our purchases,” he said.
While finding itself isolated among international powers and unable to deal even with potential ‘friendly’ countries under the pressure of US sanctions reimposed since 2018, Iran has been unable to make major deals, though has closely supported its ally Syria throughout the proxy war in that country.
Iran has also been long accused of supplying ballistic missiles to Yemen’s Houthi rebels as well, resulting in occasional major attacks on Saudi Arabian military and oil facility sites.
Iran has developed a large domestic arms industry in the face of international sanctions and embargoes that have barred it from importing many weapons. https://t.co/oCj3mei6P1
— Algemeiner (@Algemeiner) October 18, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
But it’s clear there’s been some significant advances in the Islamic Republic’s domestic production capabilities. Gen. Hatami touted this, saying “Even our enemies admit that Iran today is a significant missile power in the world… It is also a renowned world power in the aerial field.” He highlighted Iranian-build drones and missile defense systems.
“Our Khordad-3 defense system managed to target an expensive American stealth drone which had intruded the Iranian airspace,” the defense minister underscored.
One likely country “despised by the US” – in the top commander’s words – that Iran is likely to sell to is Venezuela.
Over the past two years Washington has actively plotted to topple Nicolas Maduro with the help of local military dissidents, but to no avail. From there, Iran stepped up its support to Caracas, especially by shipping tankers full of gasoline of late.
- Sperry Exposes The Complete History Of Hunter Biden's Crony-Connected Jobs
Sperry Exposes The Complete History Of Hunter Biden’s Crony-Connected Jobs
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 23:00Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearInvestigations.com,
Hunter Biden profited from his father’s political connections long before he struck questionable deals in countries where Joe Biden was undertaking diplomatic missions as vice president. In fact, virtually all the jobs listed on his resume going back to his first position out of college, which paid a six-figure salary, came courtesy of the former six-term senator’s donors, lobbyists and allies, a RealClearInvestigations examination has found.
Hunter Biden: Through a lawyer, he maintained he and his father dutifully avoided “conflicts of interest.” Democratic National Convention/YouTube
One document reviewed by RCI reveals that a Biden associate admitted “finding employment” for Hunter Biden specifically as a special favor to his father, then a Senate leader running for president. He secured a $1.2 million gig on Wall Street for his young son, even though it was understood he had no experience in high finance. Many of his generous patrons, in turn, ended up with legislation and policies favorable to their businesses or investments, an RCI review of lobbying records and legislative actions taken by the elder Biden confirms.
That the 50-year-old Hunter has been trading on his Democratic father’s political influence his entire adult life raises legal questions about possible influence-peddling, government watchdogs and former federal investigators say. In addition, the more than two-decades-long pattern of nepotism casts fresh doubt on Joe Biden’s recent statements that he “never discussed” business with his son, and that his activities posed “no conflicts of interest.”
No fewer than three committees in the Republican-controlled Senate have opened probes into potential Biden family conflicts. Investigators are also poring over Treasury Department records that have flagged suspicious activities involving Hunter’s banking transactions and business deals that may be connected to his father’s political influence.
U.S. ethics rules require all government officials to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest in taking official actions. The Bidens have denied any wrongdoing.
While most of the attention on Hunter has focused on his dealings in Ukraine and China when his father was in the White House, he also cashed in on cushy jobs and sweetheart deals throughout his dad’s long Senate career, records reveal.
“Hunter Biden’s Ukraine-China connections are just one element of the Biden corruption story,” said Tom Fitton, president of the Washington-based watchdog group Judicial Watch, who contends Biden used both the Office of the Vice President and the Senate to advance his son’s personal interests.
In each case, Hunter Biden appeared under-qualified for the positions he obtained. All the while, he was a chronic abuser of alcohol and drugs, including crack cocaine, and has cycled in and out of no fewer than six drug-rehab treatment programs, according to published reports. He’s also been the subject of at least two drug-related investigations by police, one in 1988 and another in 2016, according to federal records and reports. A third drug investigation resulted in his discharge from the U.S. Navy Reserve in 2014.
This comprehensive account of Hunter Biden’s “unique career trajectory,” as one former family friend gently put it, was pieced together through interviews with more than a dozen people, several of whom insisted on anonymity to describe private conversations, and after an in-depth examination of public records, including Securities and Exchange Commission filings, court papers, campaign filings, federal lobbying disclosures, and congressional documents.
Hunter Biden’s resume begins 24 years ago. Here is a rundown of the plum positions he has managed to land since 1996, thanks to his politically connected father and his boosters:
1996-1998: MBNA Corp.
Fresh out of college, credit-card giant MBNA put him on its payroll as “senior vice president” earning more than $100,000 a year, plus an undisclosed signing bonus. Delaware-based MBNA at the time was Biden’s largest donor and lobbying the Delaware senator for bankruptcy reforms that would make it harder for consumers to declare bankruptcy and write off credit-card debt.
When Tom Brokaw asked Biden in 2008 about whether his son’s job was a conflict of interest, he snapped “Absolutely not.” It was an answer he’d repeat many times in the future. NBC News/YouTube
Besides a job for Hunter, bank executives and employees gave generously to Joe Biden’s campaigns – $214,000 total, federal records show – and one top executive even bought Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home for more than $200,000 above the market value, real estate records show. The exec paid top dollar – $1.2 million – for the old house even though it lacked central air conditioning. MBNA also flew Biden and his wife to events and covered their travel costs, disclosure forms show.
Sen. Biden eventually came through for MBNA by sponsoring and whipping votes in the Senate to pass the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention Act.
When NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw asked Biden during the 2008 presidential campaign whether it was wrong “for someone like you in the middle of all this to have your son collecting money from this big credit-card company while you were on the (Senate) floor protecting its interests,” Biden gave an answer he would repeat many times in the future: “Absolutely not,” he snapped, arguing it was completely appropriate and that Hunter deserved the position and generous salary because he graduated from Yale.
1998-2001: Commerce Department
Hunter also capitalized on the family name in 1998 when he joined President Clinton’s agency. In spite of having no experience in the dot-com industry, he was appointed “executive director of e-commerce policy coordination,” pulling down another six-figure salary plus bonuses.
He landed the job after his father’s longtime campaign manager and lawyer William Oldaker called then-Commerce Secretary William Daley, who’d also worked on Biden’s campaigns, and put in a good word for his son, according to public records.
2001-2009: Oldaker, Biden & Belair
After Republican President George W. Bush took over the Commerce Department, Hunter left the government and joined Oldaker to open a lobbying shop in Washington, just blocks from Congress, where he gained access to exclusive business and political deals.
Robert Skomorucha: Hunter had “a very strong last name that really paid off in terms of our lobbying efforts.” LinkedIn
Federal disclosure forms show Hunter Biden and his firm billed millions of dollars while lobbying on behalf of a host of hospitals and private colleges and universities, among other clients. In a 2006 disclosure statement submitted to the Senate, Hunter said his clients were “seeking federal appropriations dollars.”
Hunter won the contract to represent St. Joseph’s University from an old Biden family friend who worked in government relations at the university and proposed he solicit earmarks for one of its programs in Philadelphia. The friend, Robert Skomorucha, remarked in a press interview that Hunter had “a very strong last name that really paid off in terms of our lobbying efforts.”
These clients, like MBNA, also favored bankruptcy reforms to make it harder for patients and students to discharge debt in bankruptcy filings. At the same time Hunter was operating as a Beltway lobbyist, he was receiving “consulting payments” from his old employer MBNA, which was still courting his father over the bankruptcy reforms.
In 2007, Hunter also dined with a private prison lobbyist who had business before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Joe Biden chaired, according to published reports. Senate rules bar members or their staff from having contact with family members who are lobbyists seeking to influence legislation.
William Oldaker: Did not just make Hunter a rich lobbyist, but secured him a $1 million loan that went sour. ldaker & Willison
Hunter’s lawyer-lobbyist firm was embroiled in a conflict-of-interest controversy in 2006 when it was criticized for representing a lobbyist under investigation by the House ethics committee. The lobbyist was still taking payments from his old K street firm while working as a top aide on the House Appropriations Committee. Hunter at the time was lobbying that same committee for earmarks for his clients.
William Oldaker did not just make Hunter a rich lobbyist. Oldaker also secured a $1 million loan for him through a bank he co-founded, WashingtonFirst, that Hunter sought for an investment scheme, which later went sour.
Joe Biden deposited hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign and political action committee donations at WashingtonFirst, while funneling hundreds of thousands in campaign and PAC expenditures to Oldaker, Biden & Belair. Joe Biden’s payments to Hunter’s lobbying firm, including more than $143,000 in 2007 alone, were listed as “legal services” in Federal Election Commission filings.
Oldaker did not respond to a request for comment left at his office.
National Group: Hunter won earmarks for the University of Delaware and other Biden constituents. thenationalgroup.net
2003-2005: National Group LLP
While serving as a partner at Oldaker, Biden & Belair, Hunter also registered as a lobbyist for National Group, a lobbying-only subsidiary which shared offices with OB&B and specialized in targeted spending items inserted into legislation known as “earmarks.”
Hunter represented his father’s alma mater, the University of Delaware, and other Biden constituents and submitted requests to Biden’s office for earmarks benefiting these clients in appropriations bills.
2006-2007: Paradigm Companies LLC
In 2005, when Joe Biden was thinking about making another run at the White House, after a 1987 bid that ended in plagiarism charges, his lobbyist son was looking for a new line of work too.
In early 2006, Wall Street executive and Biden family friend Anthony Lotito said, Biden’s younger brother, Jim, phoned him on behalf of the senator. He said Biden wanted his youngest son – whom he still called “Honey” – to get out of the lobbying business to avoid allegations of conflicts of interest that might dog Biden’s presidential bid.
“Biden was concerned with the impact that Hunter’s lobbying activities might have on his expected campaign [and asked his brother to] seek Lotito’s assistance in finding employment for Hunter in a non-lobbying capacity,” according to a January 2007 complaint that Lotito filed in New York state court against Hunter over alleged breach of contract in a related venture. (Jim and Hunter Biden denied such a phone call took place as described.)
Lotito told the court he agreed to help Hunter as a favor to the senator, who had served on the powerful banking committee. He figured “the financial community might be a good starting place in which to seek out employment on Hunter’s behalf,” the court documents state. But he quickly found that Wall Street had “no interest” in hiring Biden.
So the Bidens hatched a scheme to buy a hedge fund, “whereby Hunter would then assume a senior executive position with the company.” And Lotito helped broker the deal. Despite having no Wall Street experience, Biden was appointed interim CEO and president of the Paradigm investment fund and given a $1.2 million salary, according to SEC filings. Lotito joined the enterprise as a partner, and agreed to shepherd Hunter, still in his mid-thirties, through his new role in high-finance.
“Given Hunter Biden’s inexperience in the securities industry,” the complaint states, it was agreed that Lotito would maintain an office at the new holding company’s New York headquarters “in order to assist Biden in discharging his duties as president.”
After the venture failed, Lotito sued the Bidens for fraud. The Bidens countersued and the two parties settled in 2008.
2006-2009: Amtrak
During this same period, Hunter was appointed vice chairman of the taxpayer-subsidized rail line, thanks to the sponsorship of powerful Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, a political ally of his father.
Joe Biden: The “senator from Amtrak” had a son from Amtrak too. Michael Perez/AP for Siemens
In a 2006 statement submitted to the Senate during his confirmation, Hunter asserted that he was qualified for the Amtrak board because “as a frequent commuter and Amtrak customer for over 30 years, I have literally logged thousands of miles on Amtrak.”
Amtrak has been a major supporter of Joe Biden, donating to both his Senate and presidential campaigns and even naming a train station after him in Wilmington. In return, Biden has supported taxpayer subsidies for the government railroad throughout his political career.
In his testimony, Hunter denied his Amtrak appointment pushed conflict-of-interest boundaries.
2009- : Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC
Hunter co-founded the investment firm five months after his father moved into the White House and incorporated it in his father’s home state of Delaware, which has strict corporate secrecy rules.
At the time, Obama had tapped Vice President Biden to oversee the recovery from the financial crisis. Three weeks after Rosemont was incorporated, Hunter and his partners set up a subsidiary called Rosemont TALF and got $24 million in loans from the federal program known as the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility. TALF was designed to help bail out banks and auto lenders hit by the crisis.
Within months, Rosemont had secured a total of $130 million from the program. Some of the government cash was then funneled into an investment fund incorporated in the Cayman Islands, SEC records show. Such offshore accounts are commonly used to evade taxes.
The move raised ethical flags with government watchdogs who suspected the bailout cash was used to benefit a well-connected insider.
Other records reveal that another subsidiary created years later – Rosemont Realty – touted to its investors that board adviser Hunter was politically connected. It highlighted in a company prospectus that he was the “son of Vice President Biden.”
2009-2012: Eudora Global
On his resume, Hunter also lists himself as “founder” of yet another investment firm. But Eudora’s articles of incorporation show it was actually set up by a major Biden donor, Jeffrey Cooper, who put Hunter on his board after his father became vice president.
A self-described “friend of the Biden family,” Cooper also happened to run one of the largest asbestos-litigation firms in the country — SimmonsCooper LLC — and had courted Biden to make it easier to file asbestos lawsuits by defeating tort reforms. As a leader on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden had blocked reform of asbestos litigation every time bills reached the Senate floor.
Cooper’s law firm, which directly lobbied the Delaware senator’s office to kill such bills, donated more than $200,000 to Biden’s campaigns over the years, as well as his Unite Our States PAC, FEC records show. In fact, SimmonsCooper was one of Biden’s biggest donors during his failed 2007-2008 run for president, pumping $53,000 into his campaign.
The firm also put up $1 million in investment capital to help his son buy out the Paradigm hedge fund as part of the arrangement brokered by another Biden family friend, Lotito, to find non-lobbying work for Hunter.. Thanks in large part to Biden’s effort to kill bills reining in asbestos trial lawyers, SimmonsCooper has hauled in more than $1 billion for alleged asbestos victims.
Attempts to reach Cooper for comment were unsuccessful.
2009-2016: Boies Schiller Flexner LLP
When Joe Biden became Vice President, Hunter landed a high-paying, no-show job at the New York-based law firm, a Democrat shop long tied to the Clintons. Another major Biden donor, the firm gave him the title “of counsel.”
Boies Schiller Flexner: Got Fraud charges against Hunter Biden dismissed, then brought him aboard. Boies Schiller Flexner
Boies Schiller brought Hunter aboard in 2009 after the Bidens hired the firm to defend Hunter against charges he defrauded partners in the Paradigm investment venture. Boies Schiller managed to get the case dismissed.
In 2014, a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch, who was under investigation and looking to repair his reputation to attract Western investors, started sending large payments to Boies to support Hunter for unspecified work. It’s unclear what Hunter did for the oligarch, who ran the gas giant Burisma, but $283,000 showed up at the same time his father was tapped by Obama to play a central role in overseeing U.S. energy policy in Ukraine.
Boies Schiller has pumped more than $50,000 into Biden’s campaigns, Federal Election Commission records show.
2013-2019: BHR Partners
After Obama named Biden his point man on China policy, Rosemont Seneca set up a joint venture worth $1 billion with the Bank of China called BHR – and Hunter was named vice-chairman and director of the new concern.
BHR Partners: Hunter arranged for one of his Chinese partners to shake hands with his father, the vice president. Beijing approved a business license shortly afterward. BHR Partners
Following in the shadow of his father’s political trajectory, Hunter’s new venture won the first-of-its-kind investment deal with the Chinese government at the same time Biden was jetting to Beijing to meet with top communist leaders. Secret Service records reveal Hunter flew to China on Air Force Two with his father while brokering the December 2013 deal. He arranged for one of his Chinese partners to shake hands with the vice president. BHR was registered 12 days later. Beijing OK’d a business license shortly afterward.
“No one else had such an arrangement in China,” said Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute.
Hunter resigned from the board of the Beijing-backed equity firm earlier this year as his father faced growing criticism on the campaign trail over what critics called a glaring conflict of interest. He did not, however, divest his 10% equity stake in the Chinese fund, which is estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars.
Schweizer, whose books include “Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elites,” said Biden went “soft” on the Chinese communists so his son could “cash in” on China business deals. Biden insists he did not discuss the venture with his son before, during or after his official visit to Beijing. But others see obvious hypocrisy at play in the Biden family’s self-dealing in notoriously corrupt China.
“Biden was one of the most vocal champions of anti-corruption efforts in the Obama administration. So when this same Biden takes his son with him to China aboard Air Force Two, and within days Hunter joins the board of an investment advisory firm with stakes in China, it does not matter what father and son discussed,” said Sarah Chayes, author of “Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens National Security.” “Joe Biden has enabled this brand of practice.”
2013-2014: U.S. Navy Reserve
Hunter was selected for a direct commission as a public affairs officer in a Virginia reserve unit.
He clearly received special treatment in securing the part-time post. Officers had to issue him two waivers – one for his age and one for a previous drug offense.
His vice president father swore him in at the White House in a small, private ceremony.
Barely a year later, authorities booted Hunter from the Navy for cocaine use after he tested positive from a urine test. The reason for his discharge was withheld from the press for several months.
2014-2019: Burisma Holdings
The Ukrainian gas giant added Hunter to its board soon after Obama named his father his point man on Ukraine policy, focusing on energy. The company paid his son as much as $83,000 a month, even though he had no energy experience to bring to the table and was required to attend just one board meeting a year.
Golf buddies: White House visitor logs show that Joe Biden met with Hunter’s business partner Devon Archer, far left, on April 16, 2014. Burisma put Archer on its board shortly thereafter, followed by Hunter, far right, the next month. Fox News
At the time, the vice president was steering U.S. aid to Kiev to help develop its gas fields, which stood to benefit Burisma as the holder of permits to develop natural gas in three of Ukraine’s most lucrative fields. Biden promised Ukrainian officials the US would pump more than $1 billion into their energy industry and economy during a visit to Kiev in late April 2014. He urged leaders to increase the country’s gas supply and to rely on Americans to help them. Less than three weeks later, Burisma appointed his son to the board, after already retaining him for undisclosed services through Boies Schiller.
Burisma was run by an oligarch, Mykola Zlochevsky, who was under investigation at the time and seeking Western protection from prosecution. In a move observers suspect was intended to send a message to prosecutors, the company sent out a news release in May 2014 claiming, falsely, that Hunter would be in charge of its “legal unit.” Burisma also trumpeted the fact that Hunter was “the son of the current U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden.”
Biden’s office was aware Burisma was under investigation. The administration had tried to partner with the gas company through U.S. aid programs, but the outreach project was blocked over corruption concerns lodged by career diplomats.
Viktor Shokin, ex-Ukraine prosecutor: “The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma, and Joe Biden’s son was a member of the board,” he said in a recent sworn affidavit prepared for a European court. AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov, File
In early 2016, Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if Ukraine did not dismiss the country’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma. “If the prosecutor is not fired,” Biden recalled telling Ukraine’s leader, “you’re not getting the money.”
Biden’s muscling worked: Shokin was sacked in March 2016.
The former vice president says he was carrying out official U.S. policy that sought to remove an ineffective prosecutor. But Shokin had raided the home of Burisma’s owner and seized his property.
In addition, Shokin said that as part of his probe he was making plans to interview Hunter about millions of dollars in fees he and his partners had received from Burisma. He insists he was fired because he refused to close the investigation.
“The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma, and Joe Biden’s son was a member of the board,” Shokin said in a recent sworn affidavit prepared for a European court. “I assume Burisma had the support of Joe Biden because his son was on the board.” He added that the vice president himself had “significant interests” in Burisma.
The prosecutor who replaced Shokin shut down the Burisma probe within 10 months. Burisma’s founder was also taken off a U.S. government visa ban list.
Burisma/Wikimedia
Biden claims he only learned of his son joining the Burisma board from the news media. But there is evidence Biden had been consulted in advance. White House visitor logs show that Biden met with Hunter’s business partner Devon Archer on April 16, 2014. Burisma put Archer on its board shortly thereafter, followed by Hunter the next month. (Both Archer and Hunter maintain Burisma never came up during the private visit in Biden’s office, which lasted late into the night.)
The day after Joe Biden’s meeting with Hunter’s partner in the White House, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi reportedly emailed Hunter to thank him for inviting him to Washington and “giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent[sic] some time together.” The Biden campaign asserts it cannot find a meeting with Pozharskyi on the former vice president’s “schedule,” though it did not deny such a meeting could have taken place. The Ukrainian official mentioned going out for coffee with Hunter on April 17, 2014, which indicated he was physically in D.C. at the time. RCI has not confirmed the authenticity of the April 17 email document, first disclosed by the New York Post after obtaining it from a hard drive allegedly copied from a laptop of Hunter Biden left at a computer repair shop in Wilmington, Del. Pozharskyi did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Hunter stepped down from Burisma’s board in April 2019, a month before his father announced his White House bid and after critics made an issue of the conflicts his sinecure posed. He has since kept a very low profile. Unlike Trump’s children, Biden’s son is not out on the trail campaigning for him.
1,850 Boxes Sealed Until After Election
“Hunter Biden had no experience in the field, but he did have a notable connection to the vice president, who publicly has bragged about making clear to the Ukrainians that he alone controlled U.S. aid to the country,” noted Jonathan Turley, a public-interest law professor at George Washington University.
Retired FBI official I.C. Smith, who led public corruption investigations in Washington and Little Rock, Ark., said both father and son should have known joining Burisma was a bad idea, adding that it gives at least the appearance he was leveraging his name for payoffs from shady clients abroad.
I.C. Smith, ex-FBI official: “I would think, given Hunter’s past, the father would have asked more questions.” icsmith.com
“Clearly he’s led a troubled life and would be the sort of person susceptible to becoming engaged in this sort of rather sordid deal,” Smith said of Hunter.
“When he said his father asked if the deal was on the up and up and was assured it was, I would think, given Hunter’s past, the father would have asked more questions,” he added.
Hunter acknowledged in an ABC News interview last year that he lacked experience in both energy and Ukraine, but maintained that Burisma was impressed by other things on his resume.
“Ironically, Hunter highlighted his work at MBNA and his work on the board of Amtrak as evidence of his qualifications for the Burisma gig,” said Fitton of Judicial Watch. “But both the MBNA and Amtrak jobs, under any sensible analysis, were obvious favors for Joe Biden.”
Fitton argued that Biden’s claim he never discussed his son’s jobs and business deals rings hollow against the lengthy record of something-for-nothing nepotism.
“That’s campaign spin,” he said. “Hunter has already admitted to having at least one conversation on the Ukraine issue with Vice President Biden.”
Biden defenders argue that many relatives of politicians are often involved in government and politics. Ivanka Trump and Don Trump Jr., for instance, have cozy relationships with, or financial stakes in, companies that may benefit from those decisions. They also point out that, while they may look bad, there’s nothing illegal about such arrangements.
Fitton isn’t so sure. He said Judicial Watch is demanding Obama administration documents related to Hunter’s Ukraine and China deals, as well as other business arrangements potentially monetizing Biden’s political power.
“We can’t be sure if the arrangements were legal,” he said. “If any payments or jobs were neither ordinary nor customary, there may be legal issues.”
It’s a federal crime to provide a government benefit or favorable change in policy in exchange for something of personal value. At a minimum, argued former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, Biden “had a conflict of interest with the position his son had” on the Burisma board, noting that at the time, Biden was pushing energy policies that favored the gas giant.
The Biden School, part of the University of Delaware, which is keeping a lid on Biden records. Biden School of Public Policy and Administration
Not all of Hunter Biden’s critics are coming from the right, either.
“It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Hunter’s foreign employers and partners were seeking to leverage Hunter’s relationship with Joe, either by seeking improper influence or to project access to him,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, a liberal watchdog group based in Washington.
The Biden Institute: Maggie Haberman, New York Times White House correspondent, was a featured speaker in 2018, according to its website. The University of Delaware holds more than 1,850 boxes of Biden records under seal. Biden Institute/University of Delaware
While Joe Biden insists “there’s been no indication of any conflict of interest from Ukraine or anywhere else,” Senate investigators are seeking a number of related emails and memos generated during the Obama administration, as well as his 36-year Senate career. That period, spanning from 1973 to 2009, coincides with a large chunk of his son’s resume.
However, Biden has sealed the bulk of the records at the University of Delaware Library, which refuses to release any of his papers until after the election. It maintains more than 1,850 boxes of Biden records, including his speeches, voting records, position papers and notes from confidential interviews he’s conducted with foreign leaders, among other documents. The papers the university is keeping a lid on could shed light on Biden’s thinking behind foreign policies and controversial bills he sponsored.
A spokeswoman said the library will not release any of Biden’s papers to the public until they are “properly processed and archived.” Until then, “access is only available with Vice President Biden’s express consent,” she said, while declining to answer whether the university would comply if the Senate subpoenaed documents as part of its investigation of the Bidens.
The university houses the Biden Institute, which is part of the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration.
Through a lawyer, Hunter maintained he and his father dutifully avoided “conflicts of interest” — or even “the appearance of such conflicts.” In every business pursuit, he asserted, they acted “appropriately and in good faith.”
However, in a moment of candor during a recent ABC News interview, Hunter confessed: “I don’t think that there’s a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden,” before adding, “There’s literally nothing my father in some way hasn’t had influence over.”
Still, the elder Biden argues it’s the Trump family who has the nepotism problem. In a recent CBS “60 Minutes” interview, he slammed the president for letting his daughter and son-in-law “sit in on Cabinet meetings.”
“It’s just simply improper because you should make it clear to the American public that everything you’re doing is for them,” he intoned. “For them.”
- Indian Army Captures Chinese Soldier Who 'Strayed' Across Ladakh Border
Indian Army Captures Chinese Soldier Who ‘Strayed’ Across Ladakh Border
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 22:40A Chinese PLA soldier has been apprehended by the Indian Army in the western Himalayan border region of Ladakh on Monday, where both sides have been locked in a fierce border dispute which over the summer broke into hand-to-hand clashes that left at least 20 Indian troops killed.
While the Chinese side has kept quiet about it, Indian military officials say the lone Chinese soldier appears to have strayed across the contested border line where thousands on each side have been based amid a military build-up. Indian media is so far widely reporting the soldier is expected to be returned based on official statements.
Frontier region of Ladakh, via PTI/New Indian Express “The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldier was captured in the Demchok area of eastern Ladakh and would be returned after the completion of formalities,” the Indian Army said according to Al Jazeera.
“The PLA soldier has been provided medical assistance including oxygen, food and warm clothes to protect him from the vagaries of extreme altitude and harsh climatic conditions,” the statement said.
It’s unclear how quickly the soldier is expected to be returned to the Chinese side, but it’s a very rare occurrence, also coming at a moment of continued high tensions.
China and India have been engaged in military-to-military talks to attempt to return the region to a peaceful status quo amid the border dispute, which reaches back decades.
Via @IndoPac_Info Each side has accused the other of violating prior agreements, but for now that talks appear to have kept the peace even as a military build-up on each side has continued.
However, as of September both sides were witnessed sending additional troops and supplies to the harsh high-altitude region, strongly suggesting the standoff will continue for the long haul.
When winter hits, all roads leading to the area are blocked, so it appears the rival militaries are digging in for the long harsh winter.
- Will Your FBI Entrap You?
Will Your FBI Entrap You?
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 22:20Authored by Angelo Codevilla via AmGreatness.com,
The FBI-generated indictment of six men on charges of terrorism for planning to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has all the earmarks of what has become that corrupt agency’s standard operating procedure.
Their lawyers are sure to claim they were victims of entrapment. If the case comes to trial, I doubt a jury will convict them.
During the eight years I spent supervising the intelligence agencies for the Senate Intelligence Committee, I watched as what had been a clerisy of strait-laced guardians of truth and justice was becoming a bunch of lazy bureaucrats eager to serve the ruling class’ prejudices.
No longer doing the hard and dangerous work of investigating deeply connected criminals and subversives such as the Mafia and well-financed, politically supported subversives, the FBI limited its vision to politically correct “profiles,” and started chasing small fry. Easy targets, defended by no one. What’s not to like?
After 9/11, the FBI spent few years going after very petty Islamists while covering its collective eyes to the work of major sources of trouble, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestinian Authority, and Saudi Arabia—each beloved by parts of the ruling class. But before and after this period, these profiles more often than not pointed to the ruling class’ favorite enemy: fellow Americans “excessively concerned with their liberties.”
The FBI’s method? Place agents among the target group, stoke their sentiments, and lead them to say or do something that could be characterized as a crime, then arrest them and claim credit for foiling a plot. In intelligence lingo, that is provocation. In legal terms, it’s entrapment. By whatever name, this is the work of cheap, dirty cops.
In the 1950s, the joke was that any meeting of a Communist Party cell in the New York area was likely to consist of two-thirds infiltrators, half from the FBI and the other half from the New York Police Department. But these FBI infiltrators, like those of the Vietnam era in the 1960s and early ’70s, and like those who penetrated organized crime were merely watching. Doing an honest job. They were not provoking or entrapping, not creating something that would never have been there except for their presence.
Fast forward to our time. The contrast between how the FBI behaves with regard to persons connected to the ruling class and those who are not speaks for itself. The 918 Americans who died in mass suicide in Jonestown Guyana in November 1978 were victims of a cult that had been closely associated with the California Democratic Party. Relatives of the people who were being drawn in had complained to the FBI. But the FBI had refused to keep an eye on the movement, and later officially argued that doing so would have infringed on its political and religious liberties.
And yet when the Tea Party movement arose to protest collusion between the Republican and Democratic parties against popular sentiment on a host of political issues, the FBI rushed to infiltrate it.
Having addressed countless meetings of Tea Parties in Northern California from 2010 to 2012, I experienced this infiltration directly. The audiences were respectful, and asked informative questions. When, occasionally, I got a question that seemed to push me to say something inflammatory, I made it a point to find and speak to the individual who had asked it. Invariably, the person fit a profile with which I had become familiar from my years overseeing the FBI: a man in his late 30s, who had recently moved into the community and worked for a big company, often remotely, and whose echoing of the sentiments surrounding him sounded studied. I would then advise him on how to write his report to headquarters. Generally, the man would walk away.
In the Michigan case, it seems the FBI had started by monitoring the men’s social media traffic and, on the basis of “excess concern for liberty” (prithee, what is that?) had obtained warrants for wiretaps and had inserted one or more infiltrators. But up to this time, no crime could be alleged—only what the FBI and its local affiliate considered a bad attitude.
What exactly was the infiltrator’s role in moving the men from mere talk to incipient, allegedly criminal action? That is going to be the essence of the trial. The FBI will produce recordings made by the infiltrator. When was the device turned on, and when off? To what extent do those intermissions and/or additions made to the recording contribute to the impression that this was a real plot hatched autonomously?
The accused will have the government’s and media’s full weights used against them, as would you or I.
The jury will have to decide whether the FBI was protecting society from sociopaths or whether it is itself sociopathic.
- DC Lobbyists See Dollar Signs Under Potential Biden Win
DC Lobbyists See Dollar Signs Under Potential Biden Win
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 22:00DC lobbyists are licking their chops at the prospect of a Biden win in November, as a flood of new regulations means they’ll have their work cut out for them.
“There is a huge amount of planning going on in our client base for what this could look like,” according to Holland & Knight LLP lobbyist, Rich Gold. “It’s highly likely the first six months of 2021 are some of the biggest legislative months I will have in my career in terms of things moving.“
Gold represents the American Chemistry Council, education technology provider Zovio, Inc., agriculture giant Corteva and several local governments.
According to Bloomberg, K Street lobbyists began planning for major changes when polling began to show former Vice President Biden leading President Trump, as well as the possibility that Democrats would regain control of the Senate.
“Not since 2008, when President George W. Bush was leaving the White House, have lobbyists planned for the possibility of so sweeping a change in Washington’s corridors of power,” writes Bloomberg‘s Jennifer Dlouhy and Ben Brody.
The presidential race remains tight in key states and the firms remain vigilant for another Trump victory like the one that caught many by surprise in 2016. But they are hedging their bets and increasingly planning around Biden’s polling lead.
One firm is developing dossiers on potential appointees, selling them to clients under the maxim “people are policy.” Another has created flow charts outlining possible committee leadership changes on Capitol Hill. And at least one group has established a war room to brainstorm strategies for countering policy proposals. –Bloomberg
One oil lobbyist told Bloomberg on condition of anonymity that the election would be a “rack-and-stack” exercise when it comes to the multitude of actions the Biden administration could undertake, while a Democratic sweep of the Senate has caused many lobbyists to begin cultivating relationships with moderate Democrats, including Jon Tester of Montana, Kyrsten Sinema of Zrizona, and Joe Machin of West Virginia.
According to lobbyists interviewed by Bloomberg News, a Biden administration would likely take immediate action on a new COVID-19 relief bill to help stimulate the US economy, along with their healthcare agenda and an increase in the corporate tax rate.
The stimulus bill alone would generate a whirlwind of activity for corporate interests – such as drugmakers who want to fend off the Trump administration’s efforts to limit drug prices, while the renewable energy industry will be looking for ways to get in on the COVID-19 package to foster clean energy programs.
“It’s so difficult to play out some of these scenarios here, and as a committed Democrat, I think we’re all still suffering from a little post-traumatic stress from 2016,” said former Al Gore aide and current partner at Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas, David Thomas. “Everything comes with qualifiers.”
The energy industry, meanwhile, will be girding their loins in anticipation that a Biden administration would undo much of the deregulation enacted by the Trump administration.
Companies are trying to figure out “what do Biden’s first 100 days look like,” and “how do they impact us and how do we begin planning for that, according to longtime energy consultant, Stephen Brown.
“You can’t just be against everything; it’s what you can be for and how can you be for it,” he added. “That creates a huge internal discussion, not just by company by company but also trade association by trade association.”
Tony Podesta’s ex-wife, Heather Podesta – a Democratic lobbyist and CEO of lobbying firm Invariant – says that “Sophisticated corporations are in a constant state of re-evaluating their consulting teams, understanding that they’ve got to be nimble and have the best possible folks advising them and representing them in Washington.” Podesta represents Apple, Yelp, PelsiCo and the Business Roundtable.
“Right now, everybody is in a state of speed dating,” she added.
Heather and Tony Podesta - Escobar: There Won't Be An Iranian 'October Surprise'
Escobar: There Won’t Be An Iranian ‘October Surprise’
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 21:40Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog, originally posted at The Asia Times,
No Washington-designed “maximum pressure” has been able to derail a crucial milestone this Sunday: the end of the UN arms embargo on Iran, in accordance with UN Security Council 2231, which has endorsed the 2015 JCPOA deal.
The JCPOA – or Iran nuclear deal – was unilaterally ditched by the Trump administration. But that, notoriously, did not prevent it from engaging in a massive campaign since April to convince the proverbial “allies” to extend the arms embargo and simultaneously trigger a snapback mechanism, thus re-imposing all UN sanctions on Tehran.
Foad Izadi, professor of International Studies at Tehran University, summed it all up:
“The US wanted to overthrow the government in Iran but failed obviously, they wanted to get more concessions out of Iran, but they have not been successful and they actually lost concessions. So the policy of maximum pressure campaign has failed.”
Under the current US electoral shadow play, no one can tell what happens next. Trump 2 most certainly would turbo-charge “maximum pressure”, while Biden-Harris would go for re-incorporating Washington to the JCPOA. In both options, Persian Gulf oil monarchies are bound to increase the proverbial hysteria about “Iranian aggression”.
The end of the arms embargo does not imply a renewed arms race in Southwest Asia. The real story is how the Russia-China strategic partnership will be collaborating with their key geostrategic ally. It’s never enough to remember that this Eurasian integration trio is regarded as the top “existential threat” to Washington.
Tehran patiently waited for October 18. Now it’s free to import a full range of advanced weaponry, especially from Moscow and Beijing.
Moscow has hinted that as long as Tehran keeps buying Su-30s, Russia is ready to build a production line of these fighter jets for Iran. Tehran is very much interested in producing its own advanced fighters.
Iran’s own weapons industry is relatively advanced. According to Brigadier General Amir Hatami, Iran is among a select group of nations able to manufacture over 90% of its military equipment – including tanks, armored personnel carriers, radars, boats, submarines, drones, fighter jets and, crucially, land and seaborne cruise missiles with a respective range of 1000 km and 1400 km.
Professor Mohammad Marandi from the Faculty of Policy Studies at the University of Tehran confirms, “Iran’s military industry is the most advanced in the region and most of its needs are provided by the Ministry of Defense.”
So yes, Tehran will certainly buy military jets, “but Iranian made drones are the best in the region and they’re improving”, Marandi adds. “There is no urgency, and we don’t know what Iran has up its sleeves. What we see in public is not everything.”
A classic case of the public face of something that can’t be seen was just offered by the meeting last Sunday in Yunnan province in China, between excellent pals Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s Foreign Minister, and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.
That’s of course part of their own strategic partnership – to be sealed by the now notorious $400 billion, 25-year, trade, investment and energy deal.
Both China and Iran happen to be encircled by rings of the US Empire of Bases and have been targets of varying, relentless brands of Hybrid War. Needless to add, Zarif and Wang Yi reaffirmed the partnership evolves in direct contrast with US unilateralism. And they must have discussed weapons trade, but there were no leaks.
Crucially, Wang Yi wants to set up a new dialogue forum “with equal participation of all stakeholders” to deal with important security issues in West Asia. The top precondition for joining the forum is to support the JCPOA, which was always staunchly defended by the Russia-China strategic partnership.
There won’t be an October Surprise targeting Iran. But then there’s the crucial interregnum between the US presidential election and the inauguration. All bets remain off.
- Greenwich Home Sales Have Best Quarter "In A Decade" As New York City Exodus Continues
Greenwich Home Sales Have Best Quarter “In A Decade” As New York City Exodus Continues
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 21:20It looks like the exodus out of the city, first catalyzed by the pandemic and then helped along by Bill De Blasio’s commitment to allow criminals to overtake the city, is continuing at a blistering pace.
Home sales in Greenwich had their strongest quarter in “more than a decade” as people looked to escape the city. Single family home purchases were up 70% in Q3 to 311 sales, the most in a 3 month period in records that date back to 2010, per Bloomberg.
According to appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate, the median price of the sales was up 18% to $2.13 million.
Discounts in Greenwich have averaged just 4.4%, the smallest in a decade – and properties are staying on the market for 25% less time than they were a year ago.
The suburb had been coming off of a long stretch where home prices were faltering and sales were slowing. But the large estates that had fallen out of favor are now once again in demand. Buyers are once again placing premiums on luxuries like swimming pools and “enough land for socially distant gatherings”, Bloomberg notes.
Brokerage manager David Haffenreffer said: “With bigger homes, you’ve got the opportunity to have extended family with you, but also more amenities on-site. You can spread out and live that quarantine life in a more-liberated way.”
The section of town called “Back Country”, which features large properties on large lots, saw the biggest leap in prices.
Scott Durkin, president of Douglas Elliman said: “We couldn’t give Back Country away, it was too far away from downtown.” Now, he says the area has become the “most requested”.
And the trend shows no sign of slowing. As of September, there were 172 homes under contract, an almost 100% increase from the year prior. Haffenreffer concluded: “This could last a while. I don’t see what it is that could turn this on its head.”
- White House Chief Of Staff Warns Of Potential Lawsuit Against Tech Giants
White House Chief Of Staff Warns Of Potential Lawsuit Against Tech Giants
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 21:00Authored by Masooma Haq via The Epoch Times,
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on Monday suggested that the Trump administration would bring a lawsuit against the social media companies that have recently restricted and blocked news reports about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
In an interview on “Fox & Friends,” Meadows said that the online platforms try to censor conservatives and suggested that if the story about Joe and Hunter Biden was about President Donald Trump and his family, tech companies would have not blocked the story.
“They have two standards: one for one campaign, one for the other. But I do believe that additional lawsuits will be filed perhaps as early as today to go after that,” Meadows said.
“Listen, it’s not just the campaigns,” he added. “They’re now starting to censor, actually, reporters. That’s a dangerous place for them to go when they’re the arbiter of what they deem to be the truth.”
The Chief of Staff’s comments come in the wake of a report by the New York Post alleging to have obtained emails from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden. Many Democrats have claimed the story is an effort to discredit Joe Biden and an attempt by Russia to help elect Trump. So far, neither of the Bidens have denied the authenticity of the emails.
The threat of a lawsuit was also prompted by the actions Twitter took to lock Trump’s reelection campaign account last Thursday for trying to share the New York Post story.
Meadows said he has not received any intelligence suggesting that the Russians were involved in the emails being extracted from Hunter Biden’s laptop as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has alleged.
“All of this narrative that is out there that would suggest that it’s not real, that’s the disinformation. You know, Adam Schiff came on and said, ‘Oh, this is Russia, Russia, Russia,’ and again, I can tell you this is Adam Schiff once again trying to spin a story that’s not accurate.” Meadows said,
“I talked to director Ratcliffe over the weekend and I said, ‘Listen, if this is a Russian disinformation campaign, we need to make sure the American people know that.’ His response to me is that he had no knowledge of that.”
Schiff, who is the chairman of the House intelligence committee, has repeatedly asserted, without evidence, that the Trump 2016 campaign colluded with Russia and now is claiming that Trump is working with Russia to hurt Biden’s campaign.
“We know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin,” the California Democrat said on CNN last week, claiming that “the Kremlin has an obvious interest in denigrating Joe Biden,” and that “they want Donald Trump to win.”
When Schiff was asked about specific intelligence about the Kremlin’s involvement with disinformation about Biden, the Representative was unable to provide any evidence, saying that the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe was not “forthcoming” with intelligence.
“And frankly, we haven’t got much from the intelligence community very recently, which concerns me,” added Schiff.
Meanwhile, Ratcliffe told Fox News on Monday that there is no intelligence to suggest the Hunter Biden email scandal is led by Russia.
“It’s funny that some of the people who complain the most about intelligence being politicized are the ones politicizing the intelligence,” Ratcliffe said. “Unfortunately, in this case it is Adam Schiff, who said the intelligence community believes the Hunter Biden laptop and emails on it are part of a Russian disinformation campaign.”
He continued, “Let me be clear: the intelligence community doesn’t believe that, because there is no intelligence that supports that. And we have shared no [such] intelligence with Chairman Schiff or any other member of Congress.”
- "Nasdaq Whale" Doubles Down: SoftBank Ups Tech Stock Holdings To $20 Billion
“Nasdaq Whale” Doubles Down: SoftBank Ups Tech Stock Holdings To $20 Billion
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 20:49One month ago, when we first reported that SoftBank was the “Nasdaq Whale” responsible for the gamma meltup across some of the largest tech names which quickly led to marketwide levitation across the entire stock market – as the Japanese conglomerate was furiously buying call spreads in a generally illiquid market and forcing dealers who were short gamma to delta hedge at ever higher prices creating a upward price feedback loop – we observed that according to Bloomberg’s previous reporting, SoftBank had been targeting investments of approximately $10 billion in public stocks as part of a new asset management arm, far exceeding the initial holdings that founder Masayoshi Son outlined to shareholders in the company’s latest earnings call, and a break from the company’s strategy of investing in private names.
Then, two weeks ago, the Nasdaq Whale made a repeat appearance, when we reported that SoftBank was back for round two: as SpotGamma wrote, highlighting the strong rally in many tech names “there are notes out detailing large options positions building in tech. Looking at FB as an example you can see how call activity has picked up over the last two weeks” and “this chasm between call & put gamma is starting to look similar to that of early August.”
This was confirmed that same day by CNBC’s David Faber who said that on Oct 1, SoftBank had bought $200M worth of calls in NFLX, AMZN, FB and GOOGL.
But if SoftBank had built up a $10 billion stake in public tech stocks by mid-August, how big was its position now that it appeared to be doubling down? Well, there’s your hint right there: according to a new Bloomberg report, SoftBank has doubled its equity positions to more than $20 billion despite what was initially a skeptical response from shareholders, one which prompted the bank to announce it would not act as a Robinhood-esque hedge fund chasing momentum stocks, and would consider tempering its trading plans in early September after reports that SoftBank’s spending spree was stirring froth in tech stocks.
Yet despite the news costing SoftBank about $9 billion in market value at the time, with the stock rebounding Masa Son has re-reconsidered and is now literally doubling down. Ironically, all this is happened just days after SoftBank’s Rajeev Misra disputed reports SoftBank had pumped up tech stocks through its options trading, saying no single investor has that kind of influence on the markets.
“Nobody buying $10 billion of Nasdaq over a few weeks is going to move the Nasdaq,” Misra said in an interview with Bloomberg at the Milken Institute’s virtual conference. “We’re not even a dolphin, forget being a whale.”
That’s some dolphin. In its public filings, SoftBank disclosed holdings of “only” $3.9 billion in stocks such high beta tech names as Amazon, Alphabet NVidia and Netflix…
… however, it has since bought a lot more stocks. Curiously, according to Bloomberg, while focusing on major tech stocks, SoftBank has also been expanding to smaller companies. Last week, it invested $215 million in Norway-based Kahoot, which makes education software.
So what is SoftBank’s thinking this time behind its “renewed commitment” to the public equities trading arm? According to Bloomberg sources, the strategy – which consists of buying out-of-the-money call options funded by selling calls at even higher prices – is “built around expectations of a volatile third-quarter earnings season.” That, however, makes no sense because SoftBank’s strategy is fundamentally a bullish bet, and anything but a vol hedge. In fact, as August demonstrated, if done in size and if it triggers another gamma melt-up, such call spread buying itself can become the catalyst the pushes stocks higher. And that’s precisely the strategy adopted by Masa Son and implemented by former Deutsche Bank trader Akshay Naheta, first identified here and whom we called the “gamma whale.“
And now that this information is public amid renewed chatter of yet another gamma squeeze, will SoftBank fade away as it did in early September when it was first identified? Hardly: if anything Masa Son will triple down. After all, for the Japanese billionaire, the only thing that matters is SoftBank’s stock price, and that just happened to hit a 20 year high on monday, the highest since the March 2000 dot com boom.
In fact, looking at the chart above, it is very likely that Masa Son will aggressively continue to expand this strategy until softbank’s stock price regains it all time bubble highs.
- Indian Police Catch Smuggler With 2 Pounds Of Gold Stuffed In His Rectum
Indian Police Catch Smuggler With 2 Pounds Of Gold Stuffed In His Rectum
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 20:40A man flying in from Dubai was caught trying to enter the Indian city of Kerala with nearly 1 kilogram (roughly 2.2 pounds) in gold bullion hidden inside his rectum. The man arrived at Kerala’s Kannur airport on a GoAir flight from Dubai.
According to the National Journal, airport intelligence officers spotted the man waddling through the airport and decided he looked suspicious. After executing a search, they soon found 972 grams of flattened gold coins inside the man’s rectum.
AIU Kannur seized 1470gm gold in compound form (1316 gm extracted) from a passenger who arrived from Dubai by flight G8 4013.@cbic_india@cgstcustvm pic.twitter.com/r7usvtYVe6
— Commissionerate of Customs (Preventive), Cochin (@ccphqrskochi) October 13, 2020
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Another passenger on the same flight in from Dubai was caught trying to smuggle roughly 1.5 kilos, though the report didn’t provide any details on his situation.
The following day, the customs office seized 386g of gold from a passenger who landed in the coastal city of Kozhikode on an Air Arabia flight from Sharjah, another city in the UAE.
Local officials said the gold was hidden in the traveler’s underwear in an attempt to avoid declaring it.
Indian police have reported a surge in criminal gangs trying to smuggle gold into the country in recent months, presumably as India’s punishing COVID-19 lockdown ravaged the country’s economy. Customs officials said smugglers returning to India typically mask the gold in chocolate boxes, purses, umbrellas or even in pens in attempts to try and evade taxes.
UAE and Indian officials said they were working to trace the crime syndicate.
Gold prices have surged in 2020 as central banks unleashed a flood of liquidity to try and help mitigate the economic fallout of the lockdowns that rattled the global economy earlier this year.
Of course, gold smuggling isn’t only a problem in India, where the precious metal has important cultural significance and a major role in weddings.
- Democrat-Run Chicago Broke As Mayor Mulls Tax Hikes & Layoffs To Plug $1.2BN Budget Gap
Democrat-Run Chicago Broke As Mayor Mulls Tax Hikes & Layoffs To Plug $1.2BN Budget Gap
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 20:20In a sign of where the entire country could soon find itself, the Democrat-run city of Chicago isn’t just facing soaring violent crime, but is staring down a whopping $1.2 billion budget deficit, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Naturally the response to what some are already excusing as the city’s “coronavirus-fueled budget deficit” is for Mayor Lori Lightfoot to immediately talk massive tax hikes to plug the hole.
Mayor of Chicago Lori Lightfoot, via Chicago Sun-Times “Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is considering a $94 million property tax increase, layoffs for more than 300 city workers and a gas tax hike as part of her plan to close a $1.2 billion budget deficit, sources told the Tribune,” the report says.
She’s expected to present her plan on Wednesday, which is according to a summary in Fox and Chicago Tribune to additionally include:
- a five-day furlough for all nonunion city employees
- shifting some costs onto the books of the Chicago Public Schools
- …including asking Chicago Public Schools to reimburse city for $40 million more in school pension contributions
- raising the cloud-computing tax
- up to 350 layoffs of civic employees
- possible $77 million in cuts to unfilled positions, or more than 1,000 vacancies
The problems have been building for years, given already the city was strapped with $46.5 billion in unpaid bills and only a reported $10 billion cash on hand, based on a damning review of the city’s finances released this summer by Truth in Accounting.
Figures as of July 2020:
Trump and other Republican leaders have lately seized on rampant mismanagement on display in Democrat-run cities, in some instances with the president personally calling out “wacky” mayors, such as recently with Portland.
CHICAGO BROKE: Mayor Weighing $94 MILLION Property Tax Hike to Plug $1.2 BILLION Budget Gap https://t.co/ZKp1xw2wPd
— Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) October 19, 2020
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Let’s hope the proposed layoffs and furloughs of city employees don’t cut into the already understaffed police force, given that as things currently stand law enforcement clearly can’t get the soaring violent crime and murder rate under control, also at a moment far-Left activists have demanded the disbanding of the police.
Progressive activists have claimed the problem is the opposite – that Chicago PD currently takes too big a cut of the city’s budget and resources.
- Commission Changes Rules To Mute Microphones During Next Debate; Trump "Remains Committed" To Debate
Commission Changes Rules To Mute Microphones During Next Debate; Trump “Remains Committed” To Debate
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 20:00Update (2050ET): According to the Trump Campaign, the president remains committed to the debate, regardless of the rule change.
Trump campaign statement on debate commission rule changes
“President Trump is committed to debating Joe Biden regardless of last minute rule changes from the biased commission in their latest attempt to provide advantage to their favored candidate.
This was supposed to be the foreign policy debate, so the President still looks forward to forcing Biden to answer the number one relevant question of whether he’s been compromised by the Communist Party of China.
Why did Biden allow his son Hunter to sell access to him while he was vice president, and why were there Chinese payment arrangements for Joe himself worked out by Hunter and his sketchy partners?
If the media won’t ask Joe Biden these questions, the President will, and there will be no escape for Biden.”
– Bill Stepien, Trump 2020 campaign manager
With Biden ‘hunkering down’ to prepare, while Trump does 3 rallies a day, Thursday’s debate is going to be must-watch TV.
* * *
Update (1955ET): Just as was suspected by the Trump campaign earlier, the completely non-partisan Debate Commission has decide to not only drop ‘Foreign Policy’ from the topics for discussion during Thursday’s debate but AP has now confirmed that the mics of the two candidates will be muted in order to allow two minutes of uninterrupted time per debate segment.
Full Statement from the Debate Commission:
Following the first presidential debate in Cleveland on September 29th, the Commission on Presidential Debates issued a statement that “additional structure should be added to the format of the remaining debates in order to ensure a more orderly discussion of the issues.”
Since then, the Commission has considered the opinion of many who expressed concern that the debate fell short of expectations, depriving voters of the opportunity to be informed of the candidates’ positions on the issues. They advocated a variety of changes that could be introduced for subsequent debates, including the turning off of microphones to avoid interruptions.
In considering this issue, the Commission is mindful of the distinction between enforcing rules already agreed upon by the candidates and making changes to the rules. The Commission has determined that it is appropriate to adopt measures intended to promote adherence to agreed upon rules and inappropriate to make changes to those rules.
Under the agreed upon debate rules, each candidate is to have two minutes of uninterrupted time to make remarks at the beginning of each 15 minute segment of the debate. These remarks are to be followed by a period of open discussion. Both campaigns this week again reaffirmed their agreement to the two-minute, uninterrupted rule.
The Commission is announcing today that in order to enforce this agreed upon rule, the only candidate whose microphone will be open during these two-minute periods is the candidate who has the floor under the rules.
For the balance of each segment, which by design is intended to be dedicated to open discussion, both candidates’ microphones will be open.
During the times dedicated for open discussion, it is the hope of the Commission that the candidates will be respectful of each other’s time, which will advance civil discourse for the benefit of the viewing public. As in the past, the moderator will apportion roughly equal amounts of time between the two speakers over the course of the 90 minutes. Time taken up during any interruptions will be returned to the other candidate.
We realize, after discussions with both campaigns, that neither campaign may be totally satisfied with the measures announced today. One may think they go too far, and one may think they do with the measures announced today. One may think they go too far, and one may think they do not go far enough. We are comfortable that these actions strike the right balance and that they are in the interest of the American people, for whom these debates are held.
We can only imagine how fast the mic will be ‘accidentally’ cut should President Trump decide to ask Biden about Hunter’s laptop.
This seemed to sum things up rather succinctly…
1. Pathetic. 2. If you’re not allowed to interact with your opponent, is it even really a debate anymore? 3. The @debates Commission might as well make it official and join the Biden campaign. https://t.co/lnQQhNOij5
— Andrew Surabian (@Surabees) October 19, 2020
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We look forward to President Trump’s response to this blatant attempt to rig the debate. Perhaps this is why they feel the need to ‘adjust’ the rules…
THANK YOU TUCSON, ARIZONA! Together, we are going to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!! pic.twitter.com/GYB2zG0f4H
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 19, 2020
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* * *
The Commission on Presidential Debates is meeting Monday afternoon to discuss potential rule changes for Thursday’s debate between President Trump and Joe Biden, according to CNN.
“We are going to consider what changes we are going to make with regards to the debate on Thursday night,” said one commission member, who added that there is also a chance that no changes will be made.
The Commission announced in late September that it would explore changes ‘to ensure a more orderly discussion’ following a heated first debate between Trump and Biden.
According to Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller, the commission may allow producers to “turn off the president’s microphone whenever they want to, which again would be a gross violation of what we agreed to initially.”
Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller on a call with reporters says he’s hearing the debate commission may allow producers to “turn off the president’s microphone whenever they want to, which again would be a gross violation of what we agreed to initially.” https://t.co/2fwqta8FNP
— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) October 19, 2020
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Meanwhile, in the wake of the Hunter Biden laptop revelations – and in what we’re sure is a coincidence, the Debate Commission has decided to ditch foreign policy as a topic for Thursday’s face-off.
According to Miller, the Debate Commission “changed focus of final debate away from foreign policy so Joe Biden wouldn’t have to answer to being compromised by the Chinese Communist Party, supporting endless wars and sending pallets of cash to Iran.”
Good morning to everyone except Presidential Debate Commission members who changed focus of final debate away from foreign policy so Joe Biden wouldn’t have to answer to being compromised by the Chinese Communist Party, supporting endless wars and sending pallets of cash to Iran.
— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) October 19, 2020
More via The National Pulse:
The National Pulse understands that while “national security” has been included in the list of topics by moderator Kristen Welker, the campaigns had long been discussing the subject being the majority of the debate, rather than regurgitating on issues such as COVID, climate change, and race.
Those topics were both covered in the first debate, and in the substantive Vice Presidential debate which saw VP Mike Pence emerge unquestionably victorious over a hectoring Kamala Harris.
The Hunter Biden laptop and e-mails were initially reported by the New York Post last week, triggering a cavalcade of censorship by Big Tech firms, as well as a failure by reputable media outlets to ask Joe Biden about the distressing revelations contained within, such as Hunter’s ties to Ukraine, to Moscow, and to the Chinese Communist Party.
Speaking to Maria Bartiromo on Fox News on Monday morning, Jason Miller added: “If the moderator doesn’t bring [Hunter Biden’s e-mails] up, I think you’re safe to assume that the President will. Again, these are real simple questions that Joe Biden needs to answer to the American public. And keep in mind this is supposed to be a debate on foreign policy. I know the Debate Commission is trying to move the goal posts yet again and work in a bunch of other issues. We’re going to talk about Biden’s support for endless wars, talk about the piles of cash loaded up with billions of dollars and sent to Iran, and we’re going to talk about all the foreign corruption, the foreign money that’s been coming into the Biden family. If Joe Biden can’t answer these real simple questions, you know he’s running from something.”
* * *
Meanwhile, the moderator for the third debate, Kristen Welker, has been added to the list of ‘anti-Trump’ debate moderators – with President Trump calling her “terrible and unfair” on Saturday in response to a New York Post article accusing her of having “deep Democrat ties.”
On Monday, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade called Welker “often the most abrasive, most dismissive, most disrespectful reporter” in White House press briefings.
Brian Kilmeade is mad that NBC’s Kristen Welker is going to moderate Thursday’s debate, because her parents donated to Democrats and “she was a registered Democrat before,” even though Kilmeade’s colleague/first debate moderator Chris Wallace is currently a registered Democrat. pic.twitter.com/L59N2jZ7rl
— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) October 19, 2020
Others have noted that she accidentally tipped off Hillary Clinton’s Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri in 2016 about at least one question she was about to ask.
In March 2016 Welker was busted on live television tipping off Hillary Clinton’s Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri about at least one question she planned to ask her during a post-debate interview in Michigan.https://t.co/5YD5TOADB9 pic.twitter.com/c3qTtwIG00
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) October 17, 2020
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- Trump Announces Sudan's Removal From Terror List, Paving Way For Israel Peace Deal
Trump Announces Sudan’s Removal From Terror List, Paving Way For Israel Peace Deal
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 20:00President Trump indicated via a Tweet Monday afternoon that he is removing Sudan from the official terror blacklist as the Arab League nation is inching closer toward normalizing ties with Israel.
The president indicated that Sudan, which has long been on the list based on allegations of providing covert support to Islamic militants that have carried out attacks on Americans, has agreed to set aside $335 million for payments for American victims of terrorism in the region.
For example, Washington would later blame Sudan in part for funding operations related to the deadly al-Qaeda twin bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, which had killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. Another 5,000 people were injured in the major attacks. Sudan was known have given safe-haven to Osama bin Laden at one point.
GREAT news! New government of Sudan, which is making great progress, agreed to pay $335 MILLION to U.S. terror victims and families. Once deposited, I will lift Sudan from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. At long last, JUSTICE for the American people and BIG step for Sudan!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 19, 2020
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This means Sudan is likely to become the third Arab League member state to normalize ties with Israel, after the UAE and Bahrain inked historic, unprecedented agreements to establish peaceful diplomatic relations and economic cooperation.
The timing is also crucial, given that just weeks before the Nov.3 election, the White House could tout this as a major foreign policy win.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on an official visit to Khartoum, Sudan in August. AFP via Getty Images Talks between Sudan and Israel have been underway for some time, but full diplomatic recognition has recently been stalled after Sudan officials accused the US of threatening the country with remaining on the terrorism list if it didn’t accept the normalization deal with Israel.
Sudan has been on the State Department’s list going all the way back to 1993, amid the lengthy rule of strongman Omar al-Bashir, who was toppled by Sudanese Army coup d’état in 2019.
During the post-9/11 ‘war on terror’ Sudan became under even more scrutiny.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sudanese Governing Council Chairman Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan will are expected to meet in Uganda. Concerning the 1998 embassy bombings, Voice of America has recently detailed that “Leading up to the attacks, the Sudanese government harbored the al-Qaeda militants, providing them with Sudanese passports and allowed them to transport weapons and money across the border into Kenya.”
“Sudan had also given safe haven to Osama Bin Laden leading the U.S. State Department to place the country on a list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1993,” the report underscored.
- Supreme Court Sides With Democrats On Pennsylvania Mail-In Deadline After Justice Roberts Joins Liberals
Supreme Court Sides With Democrats On Pennsylvania Mail-In Deadline After Justice Roberts Joins Liberals
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 19:47In a decision that could have profound consequences for the outcome of the election, late on Monday the Supreme Court denied a request from Pennsylvania’s Republican Party to shorten the deadlines for mail-in ballots in the state after Chief Justice John Roberts joined liberal justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Breyer to oppose the four conservative justices Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch who said they would have granted the application.
After a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision had moved the deadline for absentee ballots to be counted from 8 p.m. on Election Day to 5 p.m. the following Friday, Nov. 6, Pennsylvania Republicans and top officials from the state’s GOP-held legislature asked the Supreme Court to the ruling.
If the U.S. Supreme Court had granted a stay, it would have resulted in a return to the original deadline. However, due to the court’s 4-4 deadlock, the previous decision stays and mail-in ballots can be counted.
As reported earlier, when discussing the implications of timing when absentee ballots are pre-processed, some states do not allow mail-in ballots to be opened before Election Day which could mean counting delays. This includes a few of the critical swing states – such as PA and WI.
And as previously discussed, with a recent WSJ/NBC poll finding that 47% of Biden supporters plan to vote by mail whereas 86% of Trump supporters will vote in person, the ruling is seen as a win for Democrats in the key battleground state, which President Trump won in 2016 by just over 44,000 votes, since Biden voters are considered more likely than Trump supporters to vote by mail in November.
Finally, as Axios adds, the deadlock underscores the importance for Republicans of confirming Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, who the president himself has said could be a deciding vote in an election-related dispute, since it is by now clear that Roberts plans on siding with liberals on election-related matters.
- "WHAT THE F*CK! IM OUT": Rapper 50 Cent Melts Down Over Biden-Harris Tax Plan, Endorses Trump
“WHAT THE F*CK! IM OUT”: Rapper 50 Cent Melts Down Over Biden-Harris Tax Plan, Endorses Trump
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 19:40Rapper 50 Cent has taken to Twitter to endorse President Trump after losing his mind over the Biden-Harris tax plan, which would result in a top tax rate of 62% in New York City.
“WHAT THE F*CK! (VOTE ForTRUMP) IM OUT,” tweeted the rapper, whose real name is Curtis James Jackson III. “F*CK NEW YORK The KNICKS never win anyway,” he added.
“I don’t care Trump doesn’t like black people 62% are you out of ya fucking mind.”
👀WHAT THE F*CK! (VOTE ForTRUMP) IM OUT, 🏃♂️💨F*CK NEW YORK The KNICKS never win anyway. 🤷🏽♂️I don’t care Trump doesn’t like black people 62% are you out of ya fucking mind. 😤 pic.twitter.com/uZu02k2Dlz
— 50cent (@50cent) October 19, 2020
…After a long discussion of who we were going to be voting for in the election, 50 Cent and myself came to the same conclusion. pic.twitter.com/H2NP7uoEGo
— Brian Dawe (@DJBrianDawe) October 20, 2020
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The New York-based rapper may want to reconsider his opinion of Trump, however – as the president received the NAACP’s Ellis Island Medal of Honor in, while then-Senator Joe Biden worried in 1977 about his children growing up in a ‘racial jungle’ if schools were desegregated, before going on to write the 1994 crime bill which would incarcerate record numbers of blacks for petty crimes.
If Biden wins, 50 might want to buy a few more Lamborghinis to stow his cash.
- CNN, New Yorker Suspend Jeffrey Toobin For Masturbating During A Zoom Call
CNN, New Yorker Suspend Jeffrey Toobin For Masturbating During A Zoom Call
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 19:39Update (1740ET): In a stunning ‘correction’ from Vice, which ratchets this story up to ’11’ on the Spinal Tap amplifier of WTF-ness,
“This piece has been updated with more detail about the call and the headline has been updated to reflect that Toobin was masturbating.”
Hey look, we understand, an accidental exposure of a penis could be rubbed off as a one-off, awkward moment but spanking the monkey, that’s a hard one to get over.
Quite a multitasker!!
* * *
From the “Not, The Onion” file (which is becoming far too regular in this farcical new normal), legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin has been suspended by CNN and The New Yorker after he exposed himself during a Zoom call last week between members of the New Yorker and WNYC radio.
“I made an embarrassingly stupid mistake, believing I was off-camera,” Mr. Toobin said in a statement to Vice, which reported the incident and the magazine’s investigation.
“I apologize to my wife, family, friends and co-workers.”
“I believed I was not visible on Zoom,” Mr. Toobin said of the call, which Vice, citing unnamed sources, said took place last week.
“I thought no one on the Zoom call could see me. I thought I had muted the Zoom video.” Mr. Toobin could not be immediately reached on Monday afternoon.
Natalie Raabe, a spokesperson for the New Yorker, confirmed that “Toobin has been suspended while we investigate the matter,” Vice reported.
“Generously”, CNN has “granted” Toobin some time off too…
Statement from CNN: “Jeff Toobin has asked for some time off while he deals with a personal issue, which we have granted.”
— Jeremy Barr (@jeremymbarr) October 19, 2020
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It appears Mr. Toobin is popular among Canadian Twitterati…
Exactly how such an ‘accident’ happens during (or even near) a business Zoom call is unclear, but as the details ‘firm up’, social media erupted in mockery…
jeffrey toobin posted hog on zoom
— nuanced opinion guy (@charles_kinbote) October 19, 2020
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the nine (inches)
— Erin 🎃GrudgePAC🎃 Ryan (@morninggloria) October 19, 2020
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the more i think about this the more confusing it is. how on earth
why on earth
what on earth— Erin 🎃GrudgePAC🎃 Ryan (@morninggloria) October 19, 2020
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“zoom dick incident” pic.twitter.com/FXDFgkwFk4
— Alison Herman (@aherman2006) October 19, 2020
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Just here to watch the comments on #ZoomDick pic.twitter.com/4ywwZlIQq3
— Franko (@RealFrank215) October 19, 2020
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