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The FBI manufactured plots to convince Trump that Iran sought to kill him, while Israel and its administration allies exploited the president’s deepest fears to keep him on the war path.

“I got him before he got me,” an ebullient President Donald Trump remarked to a reporter when asked about his motives for authorizing the killing of Iran’s Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on February 28, 2026.

With his off-the-cuff remark, Trump revealed that anxiety about his own assassination at the hands of Iranian agents influenced his decision to initiate a US-Israeli regime change war that has already resulted in American casualties, the bombings of schools and hospitals inside Iran, devastating Iranian retaliatory strikes on US military bases and embassies, and a spiraling global economic crisis.

Trump’s generalized fears of assassination were well-founded. He was nearly killed in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024 by a 20-year-old engineering student named Thomas Crooks who managed to fire eight rounds at the former president from a rooftop, slicing his ear and missing his head by a hair’s breadth. Two months later, a drifter named Ryan Routh was arrested after hiding for hours in the shrubbery outside the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida. Routh had been spotted after pointing an assault rifle toward a Secret Service agent as Trump played golf 400 yards away.

Officials have yet to produce any evidence that Iran played a role in either of these attempts on Trump’s life. Yet since those fateful events, Israel-aligned Trump advisors, Israeli intelligence, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself have gone to extreme lengths in order to tie Tehran to the plots. More shocking still is the fact that the FBI has manufactured a series of assassination plots, successfully convincing Trump that Iran was hunting him on US soil with highly sophisticated teams of hit men.

The man accused of leading the most significant of these operations, Asif Merchant, is currently on trial in a Brooklyn, NY federal court. After the US granted him a visa despite his presence on a terror watchlist, Merchant was in the constant company of an FBI confidential informant who ultimately steered the contrived plot to its conclusion. He never stood a chance of realizing his plans, and did not appear serious about doing so.

Independent journalist Ken Silva puts it succinctly in his forthcoming investigative book, “The Trump Assassination Plots”: “A closer look at the Merchant case reveals that at the very least…it was a highly controlled FBI sting operation that never posed a threat to Trump. More nefariously, records and whistleblower disclosures indicate that Merchant may have been the patsy in a case totally fabricated by the undercover agents.”

Authorities arrested Merchant on July 12, 2024 – just one day before Crooks attempted to kill Trump in Butler. Hours after the failed Butler assassination, FBI agents interrogated Merchant about whether it was in fact Iran that had Crooks under its control.

At that point, Trump was still campaigning to be a “President of Peace. On the campaign stump, he warned that his opponent, Kamala Harris, “would get us into World War III guaranteed.” Trump vowed to resolve the war between Ukraine and Russia in one day, and distanced himself from pro-war Republicans who sought regime change in Iran.

Pro-war elements in Trump’s coterie exercised multiple points of leverage to reverse the president’s anti-interventionist instincts. Ultra-Zionist billionaires supplied vital and well-documented influence over Trump’s policies by keeping his campaign war chest flush. But Trump remained an erratic personality whose petty grievances kept his aides in a perpetual state of uncertainty.

It was only by exploiting Trump’s deepest psychological vulnerability – his fear of an assassin’s bullet – that Israel and its cutouts in his administration were able to secure their influence over the president, keeping him on the warpath against Iran.

The assassination escalation trap

On January 3, 2020, as the commander of Iran’s IRGC Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, deboarded an airplane at Baghdad International Airport, on his way to peace talks with Saudi officials, a US drone killed him with a Hellfire missile. The strike had been ordered by Trump following a sustained campaign of military escalation against Iranian allies orchestrated by his National Security Council Director John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

As journalist Gareth Porter reported for The Grayzone, by the time Trump authorized Soleimani’s assassination, Netanyahu was planning unilateral strikes on Iran aimed at drawing the US into direct conflict. Trump issued orders to kill the general under sustained pressure by Pompeo and Bolton, two pro-Israel hardliners. Both former Trump officials have lobbied for the Israeli and Saudi-funded Mojahedin El-Khalk (MEK), a cult-like exiled militia that has carried out numerous assassinations of Iranian officials at the behest of Israel’s intelligence services.

By killing Soleimani, Trump set the US on a collision course for all-out war with Iran – just as Netanyahu had hoped. What’s more, the president invited the prospect of violent retaliation against himself and his national security advisors.

So long as Trump feared the specter of IRGC agents lurking behind every corner, it stood to reason that he was more likely to authorize a regime change war on Iran. And so the FBI went to work, concocting a series of plots that helped forge Trump’s belligerent attitude toward Tehran.

Brought to you by the FBI: Iran’s plot to kill John Bolton

The first major Iranian plot arrived in 2022, when the Department of Justice filed charges against an Iranian national, Shahram Poursafi, for supposedly hiring a hitman to kill Bolton. However, the hitman turned out to be an FBI informant, and the plot was largely contrived by the Bureau. Poursafi, for his part, could not be arrested because he lived in Iran.

As journalist Ken Silva reported, the FBI officer who oversaw the manufactured plot to kill Bolton, Steven D’Antuono, was the same official who ran the Detroit field office that relied on paid informants to concoct the 2020 plot by right-wing militia members to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. In a 2025 federal appeal court ruling, the judge acknowledged that defendants in that case “are correct that the government encouraged them to settle on a plan” to kidnap Whitmer. The FBI’s D’Antuono also oversaw the probe into the suspicious planting of pipe bombs at Republican and Democratic Party headquarters in Washington on January 6, 2021. In the course of his failed investigation, he misled Congress about having received “corrupted” evidence.

Though Bolton was never in danger from Iran, the FBI-contrived plot began to fuel paranoia among Trump administration veterans. Pompeo now believed that he too was being targeted by Iranian assassination teams. In his 2023 campaign memoir, “Never Give an Inch,” the former CIA director claimed Poursafi had also paid $1 million to a hitman to kill him.

However, Pompeo provided no additional details on the plot, which was never mentioned in DOJ documents charging Poursafi for attempting to kill Bolton. According to those affidavits, Poursafi sent just $100 to the FBI’s confidential human source before the DOJ concluded its investigation.

Iran’s hapless hitman granted special visa, introduced to FBI informant

In April 2024, as Trump launched his comeback presidential campaign, an itinerant salesman named Asif Merchant arrived from Pakistan to George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas. He was quickly flagged as a “Qualified Person of Interest” who’d been placed on a Department of Homeland Security watchlist. Agents from an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) team then discovered through a search of Merchant’s devices that he had visited Iran, where his wife and adopted son lived. Whether they’d received a tip from Israel, which furnishes reams of intelligence to the FBI on foreign Muslim visitors to the US, remains an open question.

According to JTTF documents obtained by pro-Trump reporter John Solomon, Merchant was “released without incident” and designated as “free to travel to desired destination.” In fact, the FBI had granted him a “Special Public Benefit Parole,” which, as Solomon explained, “would allow agents to try to flip Merchant as a cooperator or try to determine why he was coming to the United States and who he might be working with.”

The FBI whistleblower who provided Solomon with the documents on Merchant’s airport interview compared the “Special Public Benefit Parole” to the scandalous “Fast and Furious” program, in which President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice facilitated the delivery of automatic weapons from US gun dealers to Mexican cartels in order to supposedly surveil the gangs’ criminal activities.

Almost as soon as Merchant entered the US, the FBI introduced him to a confidential informant posing as a potential business partner and operating under the alias, Nadeem Ali. The informant had served as translator for the US military during its occupation of Afghanistan.

Though Merchant did not propose any crimes, the FBI wiretapped a meeting between him and the informant, Ali, in a hotel room on June 3, 2024. There, Merchant was taped making a supposed “finger gun” motion while mentioning an unspecified “opportunity.” This grainy minute-long hidden camera recording is presented as the linchpin of the DOJ’s indictment of Merchant.

According to the FBI, Merchant had outlined a highly complex plot which required the hiring of two hitmen, “twenty five people who could perform a protest after the distraction occurred, and a woman to do ‘reconnaissance.”

For the elaborate flash mob-style assassination extravaganza, Merchant was asked by the informant to fork over a mere $5000. The Pakistani visitor had no means of scrounging up the fee, however, raising further questions about the seriousness of the plot. “I did not think I was going to be successful,” Merchant would later state in court.

Virtually penniless, Merchant was forced to gather the cash from an anonymous “associate,” according to the DOJ indictment. Next, the FBI informant took him on a winding journey from Boston to New York City, where he allegedly handed the money to two other FBI informants posing as hit men. The DOJ claims Merchant made plans to fly to Pakistan on June 12, but was arrested in his residence that day.

Merchant interrogated about Butler, kept incommunicado

The following day, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks arrived at a fairground in Butler, Pennsylvania where former president Trump was scheduled to speak. He flew a drone in the air for 15 minutes, surveying the area as he finalized plans to assassinate the candidate. In an odd coincidence, the Secret Service’s anti-drone system was offline all morning and into the afternoon — until roughly 15 minutes after Crooks flew his drone. When Trump took the stage, Crooks climbed atop a slanted rooftop 130 yards away and fired eight shots at the president, missing his head by an inch, until a local police officer fired back. He was killed by a Secret Service sniper who had inexplicably hesitated to fire for a full 15 seconds.

Thirty hours later, FBI agents flew to Houston to interrogate Merchant in his jail cell about a possible Iranian connection to the assassination attempt in Butler. An FBI source told the Washington Post the Bureau “took the extraordinary step of interviewing him without his lawyer to determine whether he knew Crooks.”

The grilling continued even after Merchant was transferred to the maximum security Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn – the same prison where Luigi Mangione, the accused killer of United Healthcare’s CEO, is currently being held. There, he was held under harsh conditions in solitary confinement, unable to interact with anyone but the guards who brought him food and his lawyers because, as then-Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco argued, he might use code words to initiate further assassination plots. “It appeared they thought I was some kind of super spy,” Merchant later reflected.

Not only was Merchant prevented from calling his family in Pakistan, he was blocked from reviewing recordings of conversations he held with undercover FBI informants, as the DOJ had marked them “Sensitive.” In March 2025, his lawyer protested that US Marshals repeatedly refused to allow him to meet with this counsel and review discovery at the courthouse. This, too, was justified on the basis of specious national security grounds.

However, as the journalist Ken Silva discovered, an internal memo by the Bureau Of Prisons Director Colette Peters confirmed that Merchant had no contact with any Iranian intelligence assets in the US. “Law enforcement has not identified any IRGC associates of Merchant operating in the United States who could continue to orchestrate violent acts,” Peters wrote.

Indeed, the only Iranian assassins with whom Merchant appeared to have interacted inside the US were undercover informants working for the FBI.

Merchant “had never been close to realizing” Trump assassination 

During his trial this March 4, Merchant’s lawyer, Avraham Moskowitz, took the highly unusual step of allowing his client to take the stand. Merchant proceeded to present a version of events that contrasted sharply with the account he provided in his initial FBI proffer. For example, the defendant claimed he had been coerced into the plot by an IRGC agent, and went forward with a plan “to maybe have someone murdered” only because he feared for his wife and adopted son back in Iran.

After his arrest by the FBI, Merchant said he engaged in discussions with federal authorities about becoming an informant himself, but they ultimately broke down for unknown reasons.

“I was not wanting to do this so willingly,” he insisted in Urdu, adding, “I did not think I was going to be successful.”

In its coverage of the trial, the New York Times concluded Merchant “had never been close to realizing the vision of his Iranian handler.”

But back in 2024, as word spread of Merchant’s arrest, Israel-adjacent figures in Trump’s inner circle exploited the case to exacerbate the candidate’s anxiety about the Ayatollah’s wrath.

Israel-aligned forces blur Butler with Iran

Just three days after Trump’s campaign was nearly ended by a lone American assassin’s bullet in Butler, officials burrowed within the architecture of the national security state took measures to shift the focus to Iran.

“The Biden administration obtained intelligence in recent weeks about an Iranian assassination plot against former President Donald Trump, and the information led the Secret Service to ramp up security around the former president, according to three U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter,” reported NBC’s Ken Dilanian on July 16, 2024. (Dilanian had been fired from his previous gig at the LA Times after he was exposed for allowing the CIA to review his reports before publication).

The unnamed officials were clearly referring to the plot which the FBI manufactured for Merchant. The revelation not only seemed like a cynical attempt to obscure the reality of the near-assassination in Butler, which was conducted by a friendless American man who had never left the country. It also suggested the FBI had been so focused on concocting Iranian plots on American soil that it ignored the years-long trail of YouTube comments left by the would-be assassin bluntly declaring his intention to kill US politicians and police officers, and his hopes to instigate a civil war.

Though FBI leadership misled the public about the nature of the Butler plot, falsely claiming, for instance, that Crooks was not communicating with others online, they were never able to connect it to Iran. This clearly frustrated Rep. Mike Waltz, a close Trump ally seated on the House committee to investigate the Butler plot.

“These plots from Iran are ongoing. And when Biden says nothing, Harris says nothing, the DOJ tries to bury it, what message does Iran get? They get that we can keep trying to take Trump out and have no consequences,” Waltz fulminated on Fox News in August 2024.

Referencing the FBI-manufactured Merchant operation, Waltz thundered, “You have multiple assassination plots from the Iranians. This Pakistani national was recruiting females as spotters. He had recruited hit men and had made a down payment. He was even recruiting protesters as a distraction.”

By this point, Waltz was on his way to a short stint as Trump’s National Security Council Director, where he would help direct a failed war on Iran’s allies among the Ansurallah movement in Yemen. (Waltz was demoted to US ambassador to the UN after he accidentally included the Atlantic Magazine editor-in-chief and former Israeli prison guard Jeffrey Goldberg in a private administration Signal chat where classified information about US attack plans on Yemen was shared).

Throughout his career, the Israel lobby and Netanyahu’s allies had quietly propelled his rise. As AIPAC CEO Elliot Brandt remarked in private comments exclusively revealed by The Grayzone, Waltz was one of Israel’s “lifelines” inside the Trump administration, as he had been groomed by the Israel lobby since he first ran for Congress.

For Waltz and other Israel-aligned figures close to Trump, connecting the Butler incident to Iran appeared to offer a direct path to conflict with Iran. As an unnamed high-level US official told the Washington Post, if Tehran had been found responsible for Crooks’ attempt to kill Trump, “it would mean war.”

Certain foreign actors were also working to steer the US toward blaming Iran for Butler. In the late summer of 2024, the Justice Department received an urgent alert from abroad which connected Crooks directly to IRGC plots to kill Trump. According to the Washington Post, the tip arrived through a “confidential human source overseas” – almost certainly Israeli intelligence.

After a thorough investigation, DOJ officials decided the tip was not credible. “Nothing credibly connected him to Iranian plots,” one official told the Post.

But in the wake of the shooting in Butler, the constant chatter about looming Iranian threats had indelibly altered Trump’s outlook. Reporters who followed Trump on the campaign trail described a palpable sense of panic from the candidate and his inner circle about IRGC-directed hitmen stalking them at every stop.

“Ghost flights” for Trump triggered by imaginary Iran missile threats

With the Trump campaign already consumed with anxiety, the FBI delivered an alert that sent them spiraling into the depths of paranoia.

According to the Bureau, Iran had placed operatives inside the country with access to surface-to-air missiles. This dubious warning prompted Trump’s already militarized security team to take an extraordinary step. Fearing that Iran would down the famous “Trump Force One” airliner at any moment, Trump was placed on a “ghost flight” owned by his golf buddy, real estate tycoon Steve Witkoff, while the rest of his campaign traveled on the main jet.

Joining Trump on the secret decoy plane was his campaign manager, Suzie Wiles, who would go on to become White House chief of staff, controlling access and the flow of information to the president. Unbeknownst to the public, Wiles had served as a paid advisor to Israel’s Netanyahu during his 2020 re-election campaign, consolidating her role as a key point of contact between Tel Aviv and Trump.

Journalist Ken Silva has revealed that the FBI alert which prompted Trump’s use of a “ghost plane” was based on a cynical deception. As Silva explains in his forthcoming book on the assassination plots surrounding Trump, federal investigators had discovered that Routh, the would-be assassin at Mar-a Lago, had attempted to purchase a rocket launcher, and may have been in contact with Iranian nationals during his time in Ukraine. The Bureau likely massaged that information into the bogus report it provided the Trump campaign, conjuring up imaginary Manpad-toting IRGC operatives to exacerbate the candidate’s fears.

Once he entered the Oval Office, Trump was encircled by Israel-aligned advisors and staunchly committed to the belief that Iran had attempted to eliminate him on the campaign trail. As commander-in-chief of the US military, he was hellbent on revenge.

Netanyahu nudges Trump with Butler plot

On June 15, 2025, days after launching an unprovoked war on Iran, Netanyahu took to Fox News to manipulate Trump into joining the assault. The Israeli leader appeared to know exactly which psychological vulnerabilities to exploit.

“These people who chant death to America, tried to assassinate President Trump twice,” Netanyahu declared, asserting without a shred of evidence that Iran was behind both the Butler assassination attempt and the one at Mar a-Lago.

“Do you have intel that the assassination attempts on President Trump were directly from Iran?” a visibly startled Fox News host Bret Baier asked.

“Through proxies, yes. Through their intel, yes. They want to kill him,” stated Netanyahu with a cocksure gaze.

One week later, Trump authorized a series of US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in support of Israel’s military assault. Though Trump arranged a ceasefire soon after the attack, Israel’s influence over his administration – and over his psyche – guaranteed that another, much more violent round of conflict was just over the horizon.

In a graphic promoted by the White House’s official Twitter/X account on July 21, 2025, Trump implied that he had begun to turn the tables on his would-be Iranian assassins: “I was the hunted, and now I’m the hunter,” he declared.

By March 2026, Trump was back to war with Iran. Within four days, the US-Israeli joint assault had predictably expanded into an open-ended regional war following the failure of an opening series of decapitation strikes to induce regime change.

On the afternoon of March 4, the glowering US “Secretary of War” and former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth appeared before a lectern at the Pentagon and vowed to unleash “death and destruction from the sky all day long” over the people of Iran.

As his cartoonishly violent screed built to a crescendo, Hegseth issued a dramatic announcement: “The leader of the unit who attempted to assassinate President Trump has been hunted down and killed. Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh.”

Though Hegseth did not name the figure, an Israeli journalist who functions as one of Netanyahu’s favorite stenographers, Amit Segal, revealed that Israel had assassinated an IRGC official named Rahman Mokadam who was supposedly responsible for directing a plot to kill Trump. But once again, the details of the plot revealed layers of FBI chicanery, confidential informants masked as “co-conspirators,” and a compromised witness.

It was during these remote interviews that Shakeri seemingly claimed he had an IRGC handler who had directed him to kill Trump. But according to the FBI’s criminal complaint against him, that handler’s name was “Majid Soleimani,” not Mokadam.

The FBI agent who interviewed Shakeri clearly recognized his penchant for fabulism, writing that “certain of Shakeri’s statements appear to be true and others appear to be false.” Shakeri had indeed lied throughout his interviews, yet the agent still concluded that “it appears” he was planning to kill Trump. He did not explain why he considered the confession credible, and the allegation about a plot to kill Trump was notably absent from the grand jury indictment filed a month later.

After killing Mokadam on March 4, the Israelis went straight to the president to boast of their supposed achievement – and reignite his anxiety about Iranian assassins.

As Amit Segal noted, “Trump was informed of this in the past few hours by Israel.” In doing so, the Israelis reinforced Trump’s sense that he had been hunted by Iran – and that by fighting their war, he was saving his own skin.

As it had in the past, the White House posted a video on its official Twitter/X account proclaiming Trump’s triumph over Iranian assassins: “I WAS THE HUNTED, AND NOW I’M THE HUNTER.”

Thomas Crooks may have narrowly missed Trump’s cranium in Butler, Pennsylvania, but Israel had found a way into the president’s head.

Original article:  thegrayzone.com

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Circa 10 anni fa, quando l’Operazione Car Wash (Lava Jato) è stata resa pubblica, si è iniziato a prestare attenzione alla possibilità che alcune delle istituzioni più importanti del Brasile fossero state infiltrate (o influenzate) dagli Stati Uniti. In un contesto che è diventato noto con il nome di “lawfare” e con così tanti cambiamenti significativi nel modo in cui venivano condotte le indagini e i procedimenti legali rispetto alla tradizione giuridica brasiliana, l’attenzione si è spostata sugli scambi internazionali e sui corsi frequentati dalle autorità brasiliane, compresi i membri della magistratura, della procura e della polizia federale.

I documenti trapelati rivelano che i pubblici ministeri brasiliani hanno collaborato informalmente con il Dipartimento di Giustizia degli Stati Uniti e l’FBI, aggirando i trattati internazionali per condividere le prove. Queste fughe di notizie, pubblicate da The Intercept, mostrano che gli Stati Uniti hanno fornito supporto tecnico e investigativo, contribuendo a concentrare le indagini su figure politiche come l’ex presidente Lula da Silva.

Questo non è l’unico caso. Più recentemente, l’attenzione dell’opinione pubblica brasiliana è stata attirata dal comportamento specifico della Polizia Federale su questioni di interesse per gli Stati Uniti e Israele. È diventata prassi, ad esempio, che i brasiliani che si recano in Libano vengano arrestati al loro arrivo in Brasile e recentemente alcuni sono stati persino condannati sulla base quasi esclusiva di materiale presumibilmente fornito dalla CIA e dal Mossad. Questi cittadini sono stati accusati di appartenere a Hezbollah e di pianificare attacchi terroristici.

In un altro caso, un palestinese e la sua famiglia sono stati impediti dalla Polizia Federale di entrare nel territorio brasiliano. La motivazione addotta era che il suo nome figurava in una “lista terroristica statunitense di Hamas”.

Considerando che il Brasile non classifica né Hezbollah né Hamas come gruppi terroristici, in pratica è come se la Polizia Federale avesse un proprio allineamento geopolitico con gli Stati Uniti, sostenuto in questo dalla Procura e dalla Magistratura.

A questo punto, naturalmente, dobbiamo chiarire che ci riferiamo alle tendenze generali e ai settori strategici all’interno di queste istituzioni, non a esse nel loro complesso. Ciò non riguarda nemmeno la maggioranza dei loro membri, ma è un dato di fatto che riguarda la “mentalità”, i ‘valori’, le “tattiche” e, più specificamente, alcune posizioni strategiche all’interno delle istituzioni.

Questa penetrazione degli Stati Uniti nei settori della sicurezza brasiliani ha origini lontane. L’FBI offre corsi di tattica e intelligence per gli agenti di polizia brasiliani, comprese le unità d’élite di città come San Paolo e Rio de Janeiro. Nel 2024, i contributi finanziari degli Stati Uniti alle forze di sicurezza brasiliane hanno superato gli 11,7 milioni di dollari, raddoppiando in un decennio. Questi corsi di formazione, che includono tecniche antiterrorismo e analisi dei dati, allineano la dottrina della Polizia Federale agli standard americani, influenzando potenzialmente il modo in cui vengono condotte le indagini.

È importante considerare tutto questo a causa di uno sviluppo che è passato inosservato: un conflitto interno tra le istituzioni brasiliane che quasi nessuno ha notato, legato al lavoro di intelligence condotto in Brasile, compreso quello svolto dalla Polizia Federale.

È noto che la questione fondamentale per il 2026, anno delle elezioni, sarà la sicurezza pubblica. Con l’obiettivo di strumentalizzare l’argomento, i politici del governo e dell’opposizione stanno spingendo per una legislazione che serva i propri interessi politici o le narrazioni preferite dai loro elettori. È degno di nota, tuttavia, che l’attuale sforzo del governo federale brasiliano sia quello di concentrare, per quanto possibile, la lotta alla criminalità organizzata e le operazioni di intelligence all’interno della Polizia Federale. I governatori degli Stati, invece, così come gran parte del Congresso, sostengono il decentramento della lotta alla criminalità organizzata. Essi sostengono che la concentrazione in un’agenzia considerata soggetta a una miriade di influenze politiche nazionali e internazionali potrebbe portare a una perdita di focus, soprattutto considerando la posizione ideologica dell’attuale governo, che considera la criminalità un “problema sociale” e il criminale una “vittima della società”.

Il campo di battaglia di questo scontro è la PEC (Proposta di Emendamento Costituzionale) 18, la PEC sulla Pubblica Sicurezza, con entrambe le parti che rivedono costantemente le disposizioni della bozza. Tutto questo è stato ampiamente riportato dai media brasiliani, ma non gli aspetti della PEC che riguardano specificamente le operazioni di intelligence.

Ad oggi, il lavoro di intelligence operativa condotto dall’ABIN (l’Agenzia di intelligence brasiliana) e da altre istituzioni che svolgono operazioni di intelligence, come la Polizia Federale, è rimasto invisibile, anche alle altre istituzioni brasiliane. Questo lavoro viene svolto senza alcuna responsabilità nei confronti delle istituzioni democratiche e senza alcun controllo.

Proprio per questo motivo, grazie a un ampio coordinamento tra funzionari dell’intelligence dell’ABIN, deputati, esperti e persino partiti politici sia di governo che di opposizione, nella PEC sulla sicurezza pubblica sono state incluse disposizioni volte a “costituzionalizzare” le azioni di intelligence, assegnando al Congresso un ruolo di supervisione e monitoraggio di tutte le operazioni.

Nonostante l’ampio sostegno alle modifiche, il relatore del progetto alla Camera dei deputati, Mendonça Filho, ha rimosso tutte le disposizioni relative alle operazioni di intelligence dalla PEC sulla sicurezza pubblica il 12 dicembre, in modo che il disegno di legge potesse essere votato senza il tema dell’intelligence.

Ora, considerando che l’approccio all’argomento aveva il sostegno dei rappresentanti del Partito dei Lavoratori, dei deputati allineati con Bolsonaro, della stessa ABIN e di vari esperti di geopolitica e intelligence, cosa potrebbe spiegare questo improvviso cambiamento?

L’annuncio della rimozione dei temi relativi all’intelligence è avvenuto lo stesso giorno in cui gli Stati Uniti hanno annunciato la revoca delle sanzioni del Magnitsky Act contro alcune autorità brasiliane. Ricordiamo che negli ultimi due mesi il governo statunitense ha rimosso dazi e sanzioni a seguito di negoziati con il Brasile, senza che fosse sufficientemente chiaro cosa il governo brasiliano avesse promesso o concesso agli Stati Uniti. Una fonte mi informa che il deputato Mendonça Filho è stato convocato al Palazzo Planalto quello stesso giorno e se n’è andato con l’istruzione di rimuovere l’intera sezione sull’intelligence dalla PEC sulla sicurezza pubblica, con l’obiettivo di mantenere lo status quo. La stessa fonte afferma che vi sono indicazioni che il cambiamento sia stato imposto dalla pressione degli Stati Uniti, che non vorrebbero vedere cambiamenti nel modo in cui vengono condotte le operazioni di intelligence brasiliane. Quale motivo potrebbero avere gli Stati Uniti per impedire una riforma dell’intelligence brasiliana, se non il fatto che nelle condizioni attuali essa è più permeabile all’influenza degli Stati Uniti stessi? In effetti, la prospettiva di un maggiore controllo del Congresso sulle operazioni di intelligence e, di conseguenza, la “messa in luce” di tutto ciò che oggi rimane “nell’ombra” deve certamente causare preoccupazione agli Stati Uniti. Questo perché, nonostante anche il Congresso brasiliano sia pieno di rappresentanti allineati con gli Stati Uniti, è proprio dal Congresso, e non da Lula, che sono emerse le recenti posizioni sovraniste, soprattutto nell’ambito dei lavori della Commissione Affari Esteri e Difesa Nazionale.

È stato proprio all’interno di questa commissione di membri del Congresso che è stata respinta la ratifica del Trattato sulla proibizione delle armi nucleari, ed è sempre lì che si sta discutendo la prima bozza di una legge brasiliana contro le ONG.

Pertanto, lungi dal poter classificare la fine delle sanzioni contro le autorità brasiliane come una “vittoria per Lula”, è possibile che gli Stati Uniti stiano semplicemente riposizionandosi per garantire un livello di infiltrazione istituzionale ancora maggiore rispetto a quello che abbiamo visto negli ultimi anni.

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Approximately 10 years ago, when Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato) came to public light, attention began to be drawn to the possibility that some of Brazil’s most important institutions were infiltrated (or being influenced) by the United States. In a context that became notorious under the category of lawfare, and with so many significant changes in how investigations and legal proceedings were conducted compared to the Brazilian legal tradition, the focus shifted to international exchanges and courses attended by Brazilian authorities, including members of the Judiciary, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and the Federal Police.

Leaked documents reveal that Brazilian prosecutors informally collaborated with the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI, bypassing international treaties to share evidence. These leaks, published by The Intercept, show that the U.S. provided technical and investigative support, helping to focus investigations on political figures such as former President Lula da Silva.

This is not the only case. More recently, the Brazilian public’s attention was drawn to how specifically the Federal Police was behaving regarding issues that would be of interest to the U.S. and Israel. It has become routine, for example, for Brazilians who travel to Lebanon to be detained upon arrival in Brazil, and recently some were even convicted based almost exclusively on material allegedly provided by the CIA and Mossad. These citizens were accused of belonging to Hezbollah and planning terrorist attacks.

In another case, a Palestinian man and his family were prevented by the Federal Police from entering Brazilian territory. The reason given was that his name was on a “U.S. Hamas terrorist list.”

Considering that Brazil does not classify either Hezbollah or Hamas as terrorist groups, in practice it is as if the Federal Police had its own geopolitical alignment with the U.S., backed in this by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Judiciary. Here, naturally, we must clarify that we are referring to general trends and strategic sectors within these institutions, not to them as a whole. This does not concern even the majority of their members, but it is a fact regarding “mindset,” “values,” “tactics,” and, more specifically, some strategic positions within the institutions.

This U.S. penetration into Brazil’s security sectors goes back a long way. The FBI offers tactical and intelligence courses for Brazilian police officers, including elite units in cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. In 2024, U.S. financial contributions to Brazilian security forces exceeded $11.7 million, doubling over a decade. These trainings, which include counterterrorism techniques and data analysis, align the Federal Police’s doctrine with American standards, potentially influencing how investigations are conducted.

It is relevant to consider all of this because of a development that went unnoticed: an internal conflict among Brazilian institutions that almost no one noticed, linked to intelligence work conducted in Brazil, including that carried out by the Federal Police.

It is known that the fundamental issue for 2026 – an election year – will be public security. Aiming to instrumentalize the topic, government and opposition politicians are pushing for legislation that serves their own political interests or the preferred narratives of their constituencies. It is noteworthy, however, that the current effort of the Brazilian federal government is to concentrate, as much as possible, the fight against organized crime and intelligence operations within the Federal Police. State governors, on the other hand, as well as much of Congress, advocate for the decentralization of the fight against organized crime. They argue that concentration in an agency seen as subject to a myriad of national and international political influences could lead to a loss of focus – especially considering the ideological position of the current government, which views crime as a “social problem” and the criminal as a “victim of society.”

The battleground for this confrontation is in PEC (Proposed Constitutional Amendment) 18, the Public Security PEC, with both sides constantly revising the draft’s provisions. All of this has been widely reported by the Brazilian media, but not the aspects of the PEC that specifically concern intelligence operations.

To this day, operational intelligence work conducted under ABIN (the Brazilian Intelligence Agency) and in other institutions that also conduct intelligence operations, such as the Federal Police, has been invisible, even to other Brazilian institutions. This work happens without any accountability to democratic institutions and without any oversight.

Precisely because of this, through broad coordination between ABIN intelligence officers, deputies, experts, and even both government and opposition political parties, provisions were included in the Public Security PEC aimed at “constitutionalizing” intelligence actions, assigning Congress a role in supervising and monitoring all operations.

Despite broad support for the changes, the project’s rapporteur in the Chamber of Deputies, Mendonça Filho, removed all provisions concerning intelligence operations from the Public Security PEC on December 12th, so the bill could be voted on without the intelligence theme.

Now, considering that the approach to the topic had the support of representatives from the Workers’ Party, Bolsonaro-aligned deputies, ABIN itself, and various experts in geopolitics and intelligence, what could explain this sudden change?

The announcement of the removal of intelligence themes occurred on the same day the U.S. announced the revocation of Magnitsky Act sanctions against some Brazilian authorities. Recall that over the past two months, the U.S. government has been removing tariffs and sanctions following negotiations with Brazil, without it being sufficiently clear what the Brazilian government promised or conceded to the U.S.

A source informs me that Deputy Mendonça Filho was called to the Planalto Palace on that same day and left with the instruction to remove the entire intelligence section from the Public Security PEC, aiming to maintain the status quo. The same source states there are indications that the change was forced by U.S. pressure, which would not like to see changes in how Brazilian intelligence operations are conducted.

Now, what reason would the U.S. have for preventing a reform of Brazilian intelligence, other than the fact that under current conditions it is more permeable to U.S. influence itself? Indeed, the prospect of greater congressional oversight of intelligence operations and, consequently, the “exposure to light” of everything that today remains “in the shadows” must certainly cause concern for the U.S.

This is because, despite the Brazilian Congress also being full of representatives aligned with the U.S., it is from Congress, and not from Lula, that recent sovereignist positions have emerged, especially within the work of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and National Defense. It was within this committee of congress members that the ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was rejected, and it is also there that the first draft of a Brazilian anti-NGO law is being discussed.

Thus, far from being able to categorize the end of sanctions against Brazilian authorities as a “victory for Lula,” it is quite possible that the U.S. is simply repositioning itself to ensure a level of institutional infiltration even greater than what we have seen in recent years.

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Há aproximadamente 10 anos, quando veio a público a Operação Lava Jato, se começou a chamar a atenção para a possibilidade de que algumas das mais importantes instituições brasileiras estariam infiltradas (ou seriam influenciadas) pelos EUA. Num contexto que ficou notório sob a categoria do lawfare, e com tantas mudanças significativas na condução das investigações e processos, em comparação com a tradição jurídica brasileira, começou-se a destacar os intercâmbios e cursos internacionais de autoridades brasileiras, entre membros do Poder Judiciário, do Ministério Público e da Polícia Federal.

Documentos vazados revelam que procuradores brasileiros colaboraram informalmente com o Departamento de Justiça dos EUA e o FBI, contornando tratados internacionais para compartilhar evidências. Esses vazamentos, divulgados pelo The Intercept, mostram que os EUA forneceram suporte técnico e investigativo, ajudando a direcionar o foco em figuras políticas como o ex-presidente Lula da Silva.

Esse não é o único caso. Mais recentemente, chamou a atenção do público brasileiro o modo como especificamente a Polícia Federal estava se comportando em relação a temas que seriam de interesse dos EUA e de Israel. Tem sido corriqueiro, por exemplo, que brasileiros que viagem para o Líbano sejam detidos após chegarem no Brasil, e recentemente alguns chegaram a ser até mesmo condenados com base quase exclusivamente em material que teria sido fornecido pela CIA e pelo Mossad, com os cidadãos em questão acusados de pertencimento ao Hezbollah e de planejamento de atentados terroristas.

Num outro caso, um palestino foi impedido pela Polícia Federal com sua família de entrar no território brasileiro. O motivo seria que seu nome estaria incluído numa “lista de terroristas do Hamas”, dos EUA.

Considerando que o Brasil não considera nem o Hezbollah, nem o Hamas, como grupos terroristas, temos que, na prática, é como se a Polícia Federal tivesse o seu próprio alinhamento geopolítico com os EUA. Secundada nisso pelo Ministério Público e pelo Poder Judiciário. Aqui, naturalmente, temos que dizer que nos referimos a tendências gerais e a setores estratégicos nessas instituições, e não a elas como um todo. Isso não diz respeito nem mesmo à maioria dos seus membros, mas é um fato no que concerne “mentalidade”, “valores”, “táticas” e, num sentido mais específico, alguns postos estratégicos nas instituições.

Essa penetração dos EUA nos setores de segurança do Brasil vem de muito tempo. O FBI oferece cursos táticos e de inteligência para policiais brasileiros, incluindo unidades de elite em cidades como São Paulo e Rio de Janeiro. Em 2024, contribuições financeiras dos EUA para forças de segurança brasileiras ultrapassaram US$ 11,7 milhões, dobrando em uma década. Esses treinamentos, que incluem técnicas de contraterrorismo e análise de dados, alinham a doutrina da PF com padrões americanos, potencialmente influenciando como investigações são conduzidas.

É relevante levar tudo isso em consideração por causa de uma movimentação que passou despercebida, um conflito interno entre as instituições brasileiras que quase ninguém notou, e que se vinculam aos trabalhos de inteligência desenvolvidos no Brasil, inclusive os desempenhados pela Polícia Federal.

Sabe-se que o tema fundamental para 2026 – ano eleitoral – será a segurança pública. Visando instrumentalizar o tema, políticos governistas e oposicionistas pressionam por legislações que atendam a seus próprios interesses políticos ou às narrativas de preferência de seus eleitorados. É digno de nota, porém, que o esforço atual do governo federal brasileiro é de concentrar ao máximo possível o combate ao crime organizado e as operações de inteligência na Polícia Federal. Os governadores estaduais, por sua vez, bem como boa parte do Congresso defende a descentralização do combate ao crime organizado, por considerar que a concentração num órgão visto como sujeito a uma miríade de influências políticas nacionais e internacionais, pode levar a um desvio de foco – ainda mais considerando a posição ideológica do atual governo, que vê o crime como um “problema social” e o criminoso como uma “vítima da sociedade”.

O campo de batalha desse enfrentamento se dá na PEC (Proposta de Emenda à Constituição) 18, a PEC da Segurança Pública, com ambos lados revisando constantemente as disposições do projeto. Tudo isso tem sido bastante noticiado pela mídia brasileira, mas não os aspectos da PEC que dizem respeito especificamente às operações de inteligência.

Até hoje, o trabalho operacional de inteligência desenvolvido no âmbito da ABIN (a Agência Brasileira de Inteligência) e em outras instituições que também conduzem operações de inteligência, como a Polícia Federal, tem se dado de forma invisível, inclusive em relação às instituições brasileiras. É um trabalho que se dá sem qualquer prestação de contas perante as instituições democráticas e sem qualquer supervisão.

Precisamente por isso, numa ampla articulação entre oficiais de inteligência da ABIN, deputados, especialistas e, inclusive, partidos políticos governistas e oposicionistas, se conseguiu incluir na PEC da Segurança Pública dispositivos que visam “constitucionalizar” as ações de inteligência, atribuindo ao Congresso um papel de supervisão e acompanhamento de todas as operações.

Apesar do amplo apoio às mudanças, o relator do projeto na Câmara, Mendonça Filho, retirou no dia 12 de dezembro todas as disposições sobre as operações de inteligência da PEC da Segurança Pública, para que o projeto seja votado sem o tema da inteligência.

Agora, considerando que o tratamento dado ao tema contou com apoio de representantes do Partido dos Trabalhadores, de deputados bolsonaristas, da própria ABIN e de diversos especialistas em geopolítica e em inteligência, o que poderia explicar essa repentina mudança?

O anúncio da remoção dos temas de inteligência se deu no mesmo dia do anúncio, por parte dos EUA, da revogação das sanções da Lei Magnitsky a algumas autoridades brasileiras. Recordemos que, ao longo dos últimos 2 meses, o governo dos EUA tem removido tarifas e sanções após negociações com o Brasil, sem que esteja suficientemente claro o que o governo brasileiro prometeu ou cedeu aos EUA.

Uma fonte me informa que o deputado Mendonça Filho teria sido chamado ao Palácio do Planalto neste mesmo dia e saiu de lá para retirar todo o setor de inteligência da PEC da Segurança Pública, com o objetivo de manter a situação atual. A mesma fonte afirma que existem indícios de que a mudança teria sido forçada por pressão dos EUA, que não gostaria de ver mudanças na maneira pela qual se dão as operações de inteligência brasileiras.

Agora, que motivo teriam os EUA para evitar uma reforma da inteligência brasileira, senão o fato de que nas condições atuais ela é mais permeável à influência dos próprios EUA? De fato, certamente deve gerar preocupação nos EUA a hipótese de uma maior supervisão do Congresso nas operações de inteligência e, portanto, a “exposição à luz” de tudo aquilo que, hoje, permanece “nas sombras”.

É que por mais que o Congresso brasileiro também esteja repleto de representantes alinhados aos EUA, é do Congresso, e não de Lula, que têm vindo as últimas tomadas de posição numa linha soberanista, especialmente nos trabalhos da Comissão de Relações Exteriores e Defesa Nacional. Foi no âmbito dessa comissão de congressistas que se rejeitou a ratificação do Tratado para a Proibição de Armas Nucleares, bem como é ali que está sendo discutido o primeiro projeto de uma legislação anti-ONG do Brasil.

Assim, longe de se poder categorizar o fim das sanções a autoridades brasileiras como uma “vitória de Lula”, é bastante possível que os EUA estejam simplesmente se reposicionando para garantir um nível de infiltração institucional ainda maior do que aquele que temos visto nos últimos anos.

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The Biden FBI targeted eight Republican senators’ personal cell phone information as part of an investigation that evolved into lawfare against Donald Trump, new records published Monday show.

The agency document released by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, indicates that the FBI sought and obtained the cell phone “tolling data” of eight GOP senators and Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Penn., as part of its “Arctic Frost” inquiry in 2023. That investigation ultimately became Special Counsel Jack Smith‘s elector lawfare against Trump.

According to a Senate Judiciary Committee press release, the FBI obtained the data “about the senators’ phone use from January 4 through January 7, 2021.” The information, the presser noted, “shows when and to whom a call is made, as well as the duration and general location data of the call,” but “does not include the content of the call.”

The eight Senate Republicans targeted in the probe include Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming.

“Based on the evidence to-date, Arctic Frost and related weaponization by federal law enforcement under Biden was arguably worse than Watergate,” Grassley said in a statement. “What I’ve uncovered today is disturbing and outrageous political conduct by the Biden FBI. The FBI’s actions were an unconstitutional breach, and Attorney General Bondi and Director Patel need to hold accountable those involved in this serious wrongdoing.”

What’s particularly notable about the document released by Grassley’s team is that, according to the senator, it was discovered in the FBI’s “Prohibited Access” file.

As The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland previously explained, “material coded ‘Prohibited Access’ in the FBI’s Sentinel case management system will not appear in search results, meaning that users of Sentinel would not know that information relevant to their search even exists.”

It is this “Prohibited Access” database, Cleveland noted, where several “[d]ocuments related to the Trump/Russia-collusion [hoax]” were filed, which “prevented agents in the Washington Field Office from identifying potentially relevant evidence concerning whether Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr lied to Congress about her role in the Crossfire Hurricane hoax.” It’s also worth noting that the U.S. attorney examining materials related to the Biden family’s corrupt business activities in Ukraine was unaware of the FBI’s ability to effectively make certain materials invisible by coding them under “Prohibited Access.”

“Whether files rendered invisible in Sentinel were likewise wrongfully withheld from Congress, the inspector general, or those submitting FOIA requests also remains unknown and will be until we get answers to some fundamental questions,” Cleveland wrote.

Original article: thefederalist.com

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There is a peculiar alchemy in the world of intelligence work. Spend long enough marinating in the culture of suspicion, and reality itself warps. Every handshake is a coded exchange, every silence conceals a plot, and every stranger is a potential assassin in disguise. In this worldview, the universe is an endless chessboard of threat and counter-threat — and the only sane response is to move first, hit harder, and never, ever let the other side see you blink. It is a mindset that breeds not guardians, but paranoiacs with security clearances; not peacekeepers, but professional arsonists armed with plausible deniability.

The public is told these agencies are our shield — the last line between us and anarchy. We are sold an endless parade of threats, each requiring more secrecy, more surveillance, and more latitude for shadowy actors to do “what must be done”. The problem is that the line between protector and perpetrator has long since dissolved. The very institutions that claim to keep us safe are often the ones creating the dangers they then heroically “save” us from.

Domestically, their aim is less about defending liberty than managing the population. The FBI’s COINTELPRO operation wasn’t dismantling terror cells; it was dismantling dissent. Civil rights leaders, anti-war activists, and union organisers were wiretapped, infiltrated, and in some cases blackmailed into silence. Martin Luther King Jr, whose crime was speaking too effectively against injustice, was subjected to surveillance so obsessive it bordered on psychosis. Across the Atlantic, Britain’s Special Demonstration Squad embedded officers into protest groups for decades, with some maintaining romantic relationships under false identities. When the truth emerged, it was less James Bond and more EastEnders meets Kafka.

The same tactics persist in modern form. Peaceful protests find themselves salted with plainclothes agents who mysteriously seem to be the first to throw a brick, conveniently inviting a police crackdown. Whatever did happen to Ray Epps? In Canada’s 2022 trucker protests, there was no need for water cannons — the financial system itself became the weapon, freezing bank accounts and cutting people off from their own money for the crime of political disobedience.

If their behaviour at home corrodes democracy, their conduct abroad burns entire nations to the ground. The CIA and MI6’s fingerprints can be found in coups and covert operations from Tehran to Tegucigalpa. In 1953, Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown not for tyranny, but for the heresy of nationalising oil. In 1954, Guatemala’s Jacobo Árbenz met the same fate after challenging the stranglehold of United Fruit. Chile’s Salvador Allende was replaced in 1973 by Pinochet—a dictator whose “economic miracle” was fertilised with blood and electrocution.

The pattern is too consistent to be coincidence. In the 1980s, the CIA armed Afghan mujahideen in their jihad against the Soviets, among them a young Osama bin Laden. A generation later, the United States would spend trillions allegedly fighting the monster it had helped to train. And in 2003, a dodgy dossier on Iraq’s mythical weapons of mass destruction became the casus belli for an invasion that killed hundreds of thousands, destabilised the region, and paved the way for ISIS.

The 21st century has not brought restraint. The 2014 Maidan uprising in Ukraine was no spontaneous people’s revolt; leaked phone calls revealed U.S. officials selecting preferred leadership like items from a takeaway menu. Ukraine is now the front line in a NATO–Russia proxy war, its cities shelled and its young men fed into the grinder of geopolitics. In 2022, the Nord Stream pipelines were blown apart — a surgical strike on Germany’s energy supply. Officially, no one knows who did it. Unofficially, the silence from Washington speaks volumes.

And then there is Gaza. The idea that Israel’s intelligence network, one of the most sophisticated in the world, could have been caught entirely off-guard on October 7th requires a suspension of disbelief worthy of a Marvel film. Especially if you examine the speculation on the Tel Aviv stock market on October 6th. Billionaires all clearly had divine revelations unbeknownst to Mossad. Hamas, far from being an inexplicable bogeyman, has been quietly nurtured for decades by Netanyahu and Likud, providing them with millions in funding as a useful adversary to divide Palestinians. When the inevitable attack came, it was seized upon as the green light for mass destruction — Palestinian territory reduced to rubble, thousands of civilians slaughtered, all sanctified as “self-defence”.

To understand how such behaviour becomes not only permissible but routine, you have to examine the psychology of the intelligence mindset. It is a hermetically sealed environment in which the enemy is everywhere, trust is weakness, and morality is an obstacle. Hostile attribution bias — the tendency to interpret ambiguous acts as hostile — becomes the default operating system. Group polarisation pushes operatives toward ever more extreme measures, reinforced by the belief that their adversaries are doing exactly the same, somewhere in the shadows. In such a world, torture becomes “enhanced interrogation”, blackmail is “leverage”, and the assassination of foreign leaders is merely “kinetic action”.

This logic bears little resemblance to the moral universe inhabited by ordinary citizens. Most people are not secretly plotting to destabilise their local council. They do not blackmail the postman in case he is working for a rival delivery service, nor do they poison the neighbour’s dog “just in case”. The average person can walk past a stranger without mentally profiling them for counterintelligence review. But once paranoia becomes institutionalised, it justifies any cruelty in the name of preempting an imagined threat — and in doing so, it summons the very monsters it claims to hunt.

The most devastating weapon in this arsenal isn’t a drone or a covert assassination; it’s the manipulation of perception itself. Control the narrative, and reality obligingly follows. Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s Cold War programme to embed assets in the press, may have been officially “retired”, but its spirit thrives. Today, entire news cycles regurgitate anonymous claims from “intelligence officials” as gospel, omitting the minor detail that these sources have a vested interest in shaping the story. The result is a population primed to accept war as peace, surveillance as safety, and state criminality as necessity.

It is a perfect cycle: manufacture instability, amplify the fear, then step in with the “solution”—a solution that inevitably involves more money, more secrecy, and more impunity for the very actors causing the chaos. And when manipulation no longer works — when propaganda fails to soothe or frighten — the mask of care and concern comes off. As with the cornered narcissist whose charm gives way to rage, state power defaults to force. Protesters are kettled and beaten. Whistleblowers are exiled or entombed in solitary confinement. Journalists who dig too deep find themselves facing charges that have nothing to do with their reporting and everything to do with silencing them.

If there is a way to break this cycle, it will not come from the shadows. Real protection requires daylight: transparency, oversight, and a foreign policy that values stability over dominance. Intelligence work that cannot survive public scrutiny should be shut down, not celebrated. Ethics should be embedded as deeply as espionage tradecraft. And above all, the purpose of these agencies must shift from securing the advantage of the few to safeguarding the wellbeing of the many.

The intelligence community presents itself as the bulwark against chaos. In reality, it is often the chaos engine itself—the fox not merely guarding the henhouse but running a global poultry-destabilisation programme and selling the meat to the highest bidder. Until we recognise this and demand that our institutions reflect the morality of the people they claim to protect, we will remain trapped in the dangerous absurdity of being defended into ever-greater peril. But there is another path — one where intelligence means foresight rather than intrigue, where the measure of security is not the budget of a secret service but the absence of enemies we have needlessly made. It begins with recognising that the current system is not broken; it is performing exactly as designed. And if we wish to survive it, we must stop mistaking the hand on our shoulder for guidance when it is, in truth, steering us straight towards the cliff.

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Russiagate hysteria led the FBI to spy on a panel featuring The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Anya Parampil. As Blumenthal warned during the discussion, the bogus Trump-Russia collusion narrative was exploited to target a wide range of anti-establishment figures.

“Russiagate, one of the principal reasons that I oppose it – and why I called it out from the beginning – is that while it seems to be directed at Trump, it’s going to go beyond Trump and it will be used to suppress the left as classic McCarthyism always did.”

When The Grayzone’s founder, Max Blumenthal, made that statement on June 2, 2018, he had no way of knowing, but he was making it to the FBI.

A newly-uncovered file published by journalist Chip Gibbons shows a pair of FBI special agents was on hand to monitor the panel discussion Blumenthal was participating in that day at the 2018 Left Forum at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. The main target of their investigation appeared to be Randy Credico, a comedian and radio host also appearing on the panel, who was accused of being Roger Stone’s “backchannel” to Wikileaks – a charge Credico strenuously denied when subpoenaed by both the House Intelligence Committee and Robert Mueller.

According to Gibbons, “the revelation that FBI agents surveilled the panel of journalists and activists stem from documents the FBI turned over… under the Freedom of Information Act.” As the journalist noted, the file in question is an “FD-302,” a type of report which FBI agents use to document interviews with their subjects. The file, which can be viewed in its entirety here, specifies that the “investigation” was carried out “in person.”

The report lists one of the special agents at the panel as Andrew Thomas Mitchell. A 2024 Department of Justice press release shows Mitchell was granted an Attorney General’s Award following his work as the FBI Unit Chief on an investigation into a West Virginia husband and wife who were convicted of attempting to sell information about nuclear submarine designs to a foreign country. The FBI’s investigation into Stone, which likely led to their monitoring of Credico, was also handled by its Counterintelligence Division.

The FBI appeared to be taking advantage of its investigative mandate to surveil Credico’s friends and colleagues as well. Others who unknowingly participated in the FBI-monitored panel include journalist Anya Parampil, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, and KPFK Flashpoints host Dennis Bernstein.

Most of the two-page report is redacted, including the name of Mitchell’s partner. But Credico, who says he was approached by the pair several hours later, described the other agent as a woman. According to Credico, the agents followed him to a comedy set he performed later that evening, which was advertised in promotional materials for the forum that were included in the FBI file.

Afterwards, “a young man and woman, who were dressed like Disney tourists, came up to me as I was walking alone and told me how much they loved the show,” before revealing themselves to be FBI agents, he stated. Per Credico, he immediately phoned his attorney, who arranged to speak with the Bureau at a later date.

On July 22, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard ordered the declassification of documents which largely discredited the allegation that Moscow hacked the DNC and waged a “sweeping and systematic” campaign to interfere in the 2016 US Presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. Among the files was a previously unseen 2016 report by the US Intelligence Community admitting that the FBI and National Security Agency had “low confidence” in the assessment that Russia was behind the leaks, as well as a 2020 House Intelligence Committee report revealing that “only specific information” suggesting Putin ordered the hack was derived from a single source with “second hand access.”

Original article:  thegrayzone.com

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L’interesse per il caso è aumentato la scorsa settimana dopo che il Dipartimento di Giustizia e l’FBI degli Stati Uniti hanno rilasciato una dichiarazione di due pagine in cui affermavano di aver concluso che Epstein non possedeva una “lista clienti” o che stava ricattando personaggi potenti (nonostante il procuratore generale Pam Bondi avesse lasciato intendere lo scorso febbraio che un documento del genere era sulla sua scrivania) e hanno deciso di non pubblicare ulteriori documenti dell’indagine. Il Dipartimento ha effettivamente divulgato un video che avrebbe dovuto dimostrare che Epstein si è suicidato in carcere, ma anche questo filmato ha suscitato perplessità a causa dell’assenza di un minuto nella registrazione.

L’elenco di coloro che erano nell’orbita di Epstein è un gotha dei ricchi e famosi. Tra questi non figurano solo lo stesso Trump, ma anche Bill Clinton, il principe Andrea, Bill Gates, il miliardario Glenn Dubin, l’ex governatore del New Mexico Bill Richardson, l’ex Segretario del Tesoro ed ex presidente dell’Università di Harvard Larry Summers, lo psicologo cognitivo e autore Stephen Pinker, Alan Dershowitz, il miliardario e CEO di Victoria’s Secret Leslie Wexner, l’ex banchiere di Barclays Jes Staley, l’ex Primo Ministro israeliano Ehud Barak, il mago David Copperfield, l’attore Kevin Spacey, l’ex direttore della CIA Bill Burns, il magnate immobiliare Mort Zuckerman, l’ex senatore del Maine George Mitchell e il produttore hollywoodiano caduto in disgrazia Harvey Weinstein.

I frequentatori di Epstein includono anche studi legali e avvocati costosi, procuratori federali e statali, investigatori privati, assistenti personali, addetti stampa, domestici e autisti. Tra questi figurano i suoi numerosi ruffiani e sfruttatori, tra cui la fidanzata di Epstein e figlia di Robert Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell, i media e i politici che hanno spietatamente screditato e messo a tacere le vittime, e chiunque, tra cui una manciata di intrepidi giornalisti, cercasse di denunciare i crimini di Epstein e la sua cerchia di complici.

Molto rimane occultato ma ci sono alcune cose che sappiamo. Epstein installò telecamere nascoste nelle sue opulente residenze e sulla sua isola privata caraibica, Little St. James, per riprendere i suoi potenti amici mentre si dedicavano a relazioni sessuali e abusi su adolescenti e minorenni. Le registrazioni erano oro colato per il ricatto. Facevano parte di un’operazione di intelligence per conto del Mossad israeliano? O servivano a garantire a Epstein una fonte costante di investitori che gli fornissero milioni di dollari per evitare di essere scoperto? O servivano a entrambi gli scopi? Epstein trasportava ragazze minorenni tra New York e Palm Beach sul suo jet privato, il Lolita Express, che a quanto pare era dotato di un letto per il sesso di gruppo. La sua cerchia di amici famosi, tra cui Clinton e Trump, risulta aver viaggiato sul jet numerose volte nei registri di volo resi pubblici, sebbene molti altri registri di volo siano scomparsi (1).

I video di Epstein sono raccolti negli archivi dell’FBI, insieme ad altre prove dettagliate, forse custoditi per essere utilizzati come arma di ricatto al momento opportuno.

Epstein si è suicidato, come afferma il rapporto ufficiale dell’autopsia, impiccandosi nella sua cella il 10 agosto 2019 al Metropolitan Correctional Center di New York? O è stato assassinato? Michael Baden, un medico legale assunto dal fratello di Epstein, che ha ricoperto l’incarico di medico legale capo per New York City ed era presente all’autopsia, ritiene che si tratti di un omicidio (2).

La giornalista investigativa del Miami Herald, Julie Brown, la cui tenace attività è stata in gran parte responsabile della riapertura dell’indagine federale su Epstein e Maxwell, documenta la partecipazione di Trump nel suo libro “Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story”. Nel 2016 una donna, usando lo pseudonimo di “Kate Johnson”, ha presentato una denuncia civile presso un tribunale federale in California, sostenendo di essere stata violentata da Trump ed Epstein quando aveva tredici anni, nell’arco di quattro mesi, da giugno a settembre 1994. Johnson ha raccontato che Epstein l’ha invitata a una serie di “feste a sfondo sessuale per minorenni” nella sua villa di New York, dove ha incontrato Trump. Allettata da promesse di denaro e opportunità di lavoro come modella, Johnson ha affermato di essere stata costretta ad avere rapporti sessuali con Trump diverse volte, inclusa una volta con un’altra ragazza di dodici anni, che lei chiamava “Marie Doe”. Trump le ha chiesto sesso orale, si legge, e in seguito “ha allontanato entrambe le minorenni, rimproverandole con rabbia per la scarsa qualità della prestazione sessuale”, secondo la causa depositata presso la Corte Distrettuale degli Stati Uniti nella California Centrale. Johnson ha affermato che entrambi gli uomini hanno minacciato di fare del male a lei e alla sua famiglia se avesse mai rivelato l’accaduto. La causa afferma che Trump non prendeva parte alle orge di Epstein, ma amava guardare, spesso mentre la tredicenne Kate Johnson praticava sesso orale. Sembra che Trump sia riuscito a far naufragare la causa comprando il suo silenzio e da allora la ragazza è scomparsa.

Nel 2008, Alex Acosta, all’epoca Procuratore degli Stati Uniti per il Distretto Meridionale della Florida, negoziò un patteggiamento per il magnate: l’accordo garantiva l’immunità da tutte le accuse penali federali a Epstein e chiudeva l’inchiesta dell’FBI per accertare se ci fossero altre vittime e figure di potere che avevano preso parte a questi crimini sessuali. Trump, in quello che molti considerano un atto di gratitudine, nominò Acosta Segretario del Lavoro durante il suo primo mandato presidenziale. Pochi giorni dopo l’arresto di Epstein, nel luglio 2019, Alexander Acosta è stato costretto a dimettersi dal suo incarico.

Nel racconto di Brown, due figure legali di spicco a livello nazionale, Ken Starr e Alan Dershowitz, sono in cima alla lista dei casi legali di Epstein. Un capitolo è intitolato “Starr Power”, un altro “Dershowitz contro Brown” e si tratta di momenti di grande rilievo.

Negli anni ‘90, Starr fornì ai repubblicani del Congresso gli strumenti legali per mettere sotto accusa Bill Clinton che aveva mentito sulla sua relazione sessuale con Monica Lewinsky (3). Negli anni 2000, Starr e i suoi collaboratori dello studio legale Kirkland & Ellis raggiunsero un accordo con i procuratori che avrebbe tenuto Epstein fuori dalla custodia federale fino al 2019.

Nel 2016, Starr lasciò il suo incarico di presidente della Baylor University, mentre l’università texana era alle prese con uno scandalo di stupro, nel 2020 e si unì alla difesa di Trump durante il suo primo impeachment.

Dershowitz è ora un ex professore di legge ad Harvard; negli anni 2000, negoziò un “accordo di non prosecuzione” che permise a Epstein di scontare poco più di un anno in un carcere locale della Florida, nelle condizioni più dignitose.

Anche William Barr compare nella vita di Epstein. Quest’ultimo si diplomò al liceo a 16 anni, ma non terminò mai l’università. Ciononostante, Donald Barr, padre del secondo procuratore generale di Trump, gli diede il suo primo incarico: insegnante di matematica alla Dalton School nell’Upper East Side di Manhattan. Il padre di Barr, tra l’altro, scrisse anche “Space Relations”, un romanzo gotico del 1973 che contiene scene di sesso alieno. Lo studio legale del giovane Barr, Kirkland & Ellis, iniziò a rappresentare Epstein, cosa che alla fine portò Barr a ricusarsi dal caso come procuratore generale di Trump. Epstein si impiccò durante la custodia federale, sotto la supervisione di Barr.

Brown presta attenzione alle relazioni sociali. Un tempo, Trump diceva che Epstein era “molto divertente” e “un ragazzo fantastico”, e si meravigliava del suo interesse per le minorenni. Secondo Fire and Fury di Michael Wolff, Trump, Epstein e Tom Barrack – un uomo d’affari che poi ha presieduto l’insediamento di Trump, incriminato e rilasciato su cauzione per accuse di lobbying – erano un “gruppo di moschettieri della vita notturna degli anni ‘80 e ‘90” (4).

Alla fine, Trump ed Epstein si separarono, il predatore non era un buon affare ma qualcuno non ha dimenticato.

Il noto giornalista televisivo e opinionista statunitense Tucker Carlson, sostenitore di Trump, ha affermato nei giorni scorsi che era “estremamente ovvio a chiunque guardasse” che Epstein “aveva legami diretti con un Governo straniero” e che “a nessuno è permesso dire che quel Governo straniero è Israele, perché in qualche modo siamo stati indotti a pensare che sia una cosa cattiva”. I commenti, che hanno suscitato applausi da parte di un pubblico giovane e pro-Trump alla conferenza conservatrice “Turning Point USA”, sono stati pubblicati in un clima di protesta tra gli influencer repubblicani dopo che l’inchiesta tanto pubblicizzata dell’attuale Amministrazione USA sul caso Epstein si è conclusa con l’approvazione del resoconto mainstream (5). Molti tra i fedeli del MAGA sostengono da tempo che i cosiddetti attori del “Deep State” nascondano informazioni sui soci d’élite di Epstein e ora che la questione riguarda anche il loro ‘idolo” appaiono sempre più sconcertati. Trump, che aveva legami pubblici con Epstein da decenni, si è scagliato contro le critiche provenienti dalla sua base, difendendo il procuratore generale in un lungo post sui social media, in cui esorta i suoi follower a non “sprecare tempo ed energie con Jeffrey Epstein, qualcuno di cui a nessuno importa”. Trump, che appare in almeno un video vecchio di decenni insieme ad Epstein a una festa, ha negato le accuse secondo cui sarebbe stato nominato nei fascicoli o avrebbe avuto qualche legame diretto con il finanziere, mentre il suo ex alleato Elon Musk lo ha nuovamente incalzato a pubblicare i file del caso come aveva promesso.

Chi ride della vicenda è ormai soltanto uno: Benjamin Netanyahu.

___________

(1) Chris Hedges, Trump, Epstein and the Deep State, Substack, 12 luglio 2025.

(2) Epstein’s Autopsy ‘Points to Homicide,’ Pathologist Hired by brother claims … “The New York Times”, 31 ottobre 2019.

(3) Un libro critico sulla famiglia Clinton (Daniel Halper, Clinton Inc: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine) sostiene che Israele ha intercettato i telefoni della Casa Bianca e ricattato il presidente con registrazioni di stagisti per ottenere il rilascio di Jonathan Pollard, cfr. Rebecca Shimoni Stoill, Netanyahu said to have offered Lewinsky tapes for Pollard, “Times of Israel”, 23 luglio 2014.

(4) Lloyd Green, Perversion of Justice review: how Julie K Brown brought Jeffrey Epstein down, “The Guardian”, 25 luglio 2021.

(5) Allan Smith, “NBC News”, 14 luglio 2025.

By Ron PAUL

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Those who hoped the second Trump Administration would reject big spending, war, and restrictions on liberty continue to be disappointed. A new disappointment came when Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced her department would in May begin enforcing the REAL ID law.

Passed in 2005, the REAL ID Act created federal standards for driver’s licenses. The law requires everyone applying for a driver’s license to provide the DMV with his social security number, proof of legal residence, and two proofs of his home address. The REAL ID Act allows the Homeland Security Department to mandate, as it sees fit, the including of addition items in the related government database, including “biometric” identifiers. Biometric identifiers include personal data such as retina scans, fingerprints, and DNA.

People who doubt that this database will be used to violate the rights of US citizens should ask what a present-day J. Edgar Hoover — a former FBI director who was notorious for collecting private information on politicians and other prominent individuals — would do with a database containing personal and even biometric information on American citizens. They should also consider the IRS’s history of targeting presidents’ political opponents. Americans also have the threat of violations of their rights by hackers. The government has a poor track record of protecting data of US citizens.

REAL ID’s supporters deny the law turns state driver’s licenses into national ID cards because states have no mandate to implement REAL ID. However, citizens of any state that refuses to adopt REAL ID will be unable to use their state-issued IDs for boarding an airplane or riding on a train.

Once the initial uses of REAL ID are established, the government will then require REAL ID for other activities. For instance, local transportation authorities may be offered federal funds to implement REAL ID requirements for public transportation. Several pro-Second Amendment organizations oppose REAL ID because it could be used to monitor gun owners. There is nothing in the law prohibiting a future progressive Homeland Security secretary from requiring REAL ID for a firearms purchase. Imposing a REAL ID mandate on gun ownership would further the authoritarian objective of having a database containing the name and address of, and how many and what type of firearms are owned by, every law-abiding gun owner in the country.

REAL ID also menaces health freedom. One of the few victories for liberty during the covid hysteria was the failure of “vaccine passport” schemes to be more widely imposed. These schemes attempted to forbid people from returning to their normal lives unless they proved they were “fully vaccinated” against covid.

REAL ID was marketed as a weapon in the “war on terror.” However, Thomas Massie, the most consistent and courageous defender of liberty in the House of Representatives, pointed out that 9-11 hijackers used passports from their own countries. Rep. Massie wrote, “As long as the pilot’s door is locked and no one has weapons, why do you care that someone who flies has government permission?”

Like most post-9-11 security bills, REAL ID does nothing to protect the American people’s safety. It does, though, do much to endanger their liberty. REAL ID could even be the final piece of the transformation of America into a total surveillance society where government monitors, and thus controls, our actions. Americans who understand the danger must work to get the Trump administration to reverse its position.

Original article:

By Kit KLARENBERG

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On March 25, Donald Trump signed an executive order declassifying all documentation related to Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s 2016 investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. The order has unexpectedly resurrected buried documents that cast new light on the Steele dossier — and when it was known to be false.

It is unclear what new information will be revealed, given substantial previous declassifications, two special counsel investigations, multiple congressional inquiries, several civil lawsuits, and a scathing Justice Department internal review. It has long been confirmed the FBI relied heavily on Steele’s discredited dossier to secure warrants against Trump aide Carter Page, despite grave internal concerns about its origins and reliability, and Steele’s sole “subsource” for all its lurid allegations openly admitted in interviews with the Bureau he could offer no corroboration for any of the dossier’s claims.

Such inconvenient facts and damning disclosures were nonetheless concealed from the public for several years following the dossier’s January 2017 publication by BuzzFeed News, now defunct. In the intervening time, it became the central component of the Russiagate narrative, a conspiracy theory that was a major rallying point for countless mainstream journalists, pundits, public figures, Western intelligence officials, and elected lawmakers. In the process, Steele attained mythological status. For example, NBC News dubbed the former MI6 operative “a real-life James Bond.”

Primetime news networks dedicated countless hours to the topic, while leading media outlets invested enormous time, energy and money into verifying the dossier’s claims without success. Undeterred, legacy reporters relied on a roster of mainstream “Russia experts,” including prominent British and U.S. military and intelligence veterans, and briefings from anonymous officials to reinforce Steele’s credibility and the likely veracity of his dossier. As award-winning investigative journalist Aaron Maté told MintPress News:

Media outlets served as unquestioning stenographers for Steele. If his dossier’s claims themselves weren’t sufficient to dismiss it with ridicule, another obvious marker should have set off alarms. Reading the dossier chronologically, a clear pattern emerges – many of its most explosive claims are influenced by contemporary media reporting. For instance, it was only after Wikileaks published the DNC emails in July 2016 that the dossier mentioned them. This is just one example demonstrating the dossier’s true sources were overactive imaginations and mainstream news outlets.”

Even more damningly, leaked documents reviewed by MintPress News reveal that while Western journalists were hard at work attempting to validate Steele’s dossier and elevating the MI6 spy to wholly undeserved pillars of probity, the now-defunct private investigations firm GPW Group was, in early 2017, secretly unearthing vast amounts of damaging material that fatally undermined the dossier’s content, and comprehensively dismantling Steele’s previously unimpeachable public persona. It remains speculative what impact the firm’s findings might have had if they had been released publicly at the time.

‘Financial Incentives’

“In order to build a profile of Christopher Steele…as well as the broader operations of both Orbis Business Intelligence and Fusion GPS,” which commissioned the dossier on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, GPW consulted “a variety of sources.” This included “U.S. intelligence figures,” various journalists, “private intelligence subcontractors” who had previously worked with Steele and Orbis, and “contacts who knew the man from his time with [MI6]…and, in one instance, directly oversaw his work.”

The picture that emerged of Steele sharply contrasted with his mainstream portrayal as a “superstar.” One operative who “acted as Steele’s manager when he began working with [MI6] and later supervised him at two further points” described him as “average, middle of the road,” stating he had never “shined” in any of his postings. Another suggested Steele’s founding of Orbis “was the source of some incredulity” within MI6 due to his underwhelming professional history and perceived lack of “commercial nous.”

Yet another suggested Steele’s production of the dossier reflected his lack of “big picture judgment.” Sources consulted by GPW were even more critical of Fusion GPS chief Glenn Simpson. One journalist described him as a “hack” without “a license or the contacts to do…actual investigations,” instead outsourcing “all” work ostensibly conducted by his firm to others while skimming commissions. They also “openly admitted” to disliking Simpson, described by GPW as “not an uncommon attitude amongst those to whom we spoke.”

Glenn Simpson arrives at a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on Oct. 14, 2019. Pablo Martinez Monsivais | AP – Editing by MintPress

GPW also scrutinized “credibility and perceptions of the dossier in Russia,” specifically whether Steele‘s claims that high-ranking Kremlin-linked sources in Moscow provided him with information had any merit. The firm consulted “Western and Russian journalists, former officials from the FSB and the Russian security services more broadly, a former high-ranking official at the CIA who oversaw the agency’s Russian operations, and several private-sector intelligence practitioners operating in Moscow” for this purpose:

The prevailing sentiment from our contacts was one of extreme skepticism as to the accuracy of…the [dossier]. Most found it unimaginable…senior Russian officials would risk life imprisonment (or worse) by speaking to a former foreign intelligence official about such sensitive issues. At the very least…it would have cost Steele a great deal more…than he could afford…Former intelligence operatives (from both the U.S. and Russian services) seriously doubted Steele would have been able to retain Russian sources from his time in MI6.”

GPW also examined “possible sources for the dossier” that had been hypothesized in the media to date. Among them was former FSB General Oleg Erovinkin, who was found dead in his car in Moscow in December 2016. After the dossier’s release, the Daily Telegraph suggested his death was “mysterious” and could have resulted from providing information to Steele. A former high-ranking official in U.S. intelligence mockingly dismissed the proposition, noting that career security and intelligence officer Erovinkin was “unlikely to have needed the money.”

While conceding that financial incentives could encourage such a breach…[if] Steele had offered Erovinkin £100,000, the mooted budget for the entire project, ‘Erovinkin would have said he needed to see three more zeros before opening his mouth. It’s just a ridiculous proposition to think he would speak to a former intelligence officer from the UK, or anyone else for that matter, for such a paltry sum of money.’”

Overall, GPW concluded: “The quality and level of the sourcing was greatly exaggerated in order to give the dossier and its allegations more credibility.” This impression was reinforced by “informed sources from both government and the private sector” in Russia who were “very dismissive” of the dossier’s content. Many pointed to “woeful inaccuracies” contained therein “and its author’s general lack of understanding around Russian politics and business.” This “deficiency was particularly acute with respect to the dossier’s coverage of Alfa Bank.”

‘Reputational Damage’

GPW’s investigation also proved prescient in other areas. For example, several knowledgeable sources the company consulted — including former senior Russian and U.S. intelligence officials — suggested the dossier’s “most likely sources” were Russian émigrés, “providing…their own views.” They also noted the Steele dossier’s “hyperbole and inaccuracies” were “typical of the hyperactive imaginations of the subcontractors widely used in the business intelligence sector.” This was not confirmed until July 2020.

That month, the Senate Judiciary Committee released notes taken by FBI agents during February 2017 interviews with Igor Danchenko, Steele’s “subsource” and the dossier’s effective author. A Washington think tank journeyman jailed years earlier on multiple public intoxication and disorderly conduct charges and investigated by the FBI for potentially serving as a Kremlin agent, Danchenko admitted he had been fed much of the dossier’s salacious content by his Russian drinking buddies, who lacked any high-level access. Steele then embroidered their dud information further.

Other striking passages in the leaks refer to a conversation between GPW and “a source from within the business intelligence sector in London [who] knows Christopher Steele well, both socially and professionally, and is familiar with his company.” They relayed various details and “commentary” gleaned “directly from speaking to Steele.” For example, they noted that contrary to its self-description as a “leading corporate intelligence consultancy,” Orbis was “not a major operation” and seemed to employ just two junior analysts “who looked like recent graduates.”

The source revealed that “other, larger firms in the sector were approached before Steele and turned the work down before he took it on,” and the dossier was his solo project. “The rest of the company wasn’t involved at all, either to help on the research side of things or to look through the product before it went out,” and “Steele basically collated the information himself.” They further suggested the dossier’s sources let their imaginations run wild, believing their claims would never see the light of day:

I think they got carried away — they didn’t think the material would ever be made public because at that point it was very unlikely that Trump was going to get into power…Steele was rather naive about the whole thing. He didn’t think that it would get exposed in the way it did.”

Igor Danchenko leaves Albert V. Bryan United States Courthouse Alexandria, Va., Nov. 4, 2021. Manuel Balce Ceneta | AP – Editing by MintPress

In other investigative briefs, GPW noted it was unusual that “Steele would have permitted (or indeed facilitated) the distribution of such questionable material under his name,” given the dossier’s apparent falsity. The firm postulated that “in sharing the material with U.S. government figures,” the former MI6 operative “may have thought he was currying favor with them by doing so,” but ultimately, “he never intended for the dossier to be made public in the manner it was.”

One possible answer to this question is found in a defamation case brought against Orbis by Petr Aven, Mikhail Fridman, and German Khan in Britain in May 2018. In July 2020, a British court ruled that the dossier’s allegations against them and Alfa Bank were “inaccurate and misleading,” awarding damages “for the loss of autonomy, distress and reputational damage.” During the trial, Steele made a notable disclosure:

Fusion’s immediate client was law firm Perkins Coie…it engaged Fusion to obtain information necessary for Perkins Coie to provide legal advice on the potential impact of Russian involvement on the legal validity of the outcome of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Based on that advice, parties such as the Democratic National Committee and [“Hillary for America”] could consider steps they would be legally entitled to take to challenge the validity of the outcome of that election.”

In essence, the dossier was commissioned by Clinton’s campaign as a contingency in the event she lost the election. However, as GPW’s source close to Steele noted, when the MI6 operative took on the work, the prevailing perception was that “it was very unlikely” Trump would win. As a result, Steele may have had the motivation to fill the dossier with unverified material, believing it would never be used for its intended purpose. He also had a commercial incentive to exaggerate his high-level access. A serving CIA official told GPW:

Steele was known to have been ‘up and down the alley’ pitching for business – a reference to the major defense firms, such as Lockheed Martin, which are located close to one another in Arlington, Virginia. She did not know which firms Steele had worked for in particular, if any, but he has visited several of them in person at their headquarters.”

A core mystery at the heart of the Steele dossier saga has never been satisfactorily resolved — one that Trump’s latest declassification order could help illuminate. In his December 2019 report on Crossfire Hurricane, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz criticized the FBI’s use of the dossier to obtain warrants against Carter Page but insisted Steele’s assorted claims “played no role” in the bureau opening its investigation of Trump’s campaign, reportedly on July 31, 2016.

As extensively documented by Aaron Maté, this claim is difficult to reconcile with the numerous contacts and meetings between Steele and senior FBI and Justice Department officials in the weeks leading up to that date. The former MI6 officer provided material that would later comprise the dossier to senior U.S. government officials, including Victoria Nuland, prior to the official opening of Crossfire Hurricane. Nuland reportedly encouraged the bureau to investigate the contents.

According to the FBI’s electronic communications that initiated Crossfire Hurricane, the probe’s founding predicate was a vague tip provided to the bureau by Australian diplomat Alexander Downer. He claimed that low-level Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos had “suggested” to him over drinks in London that “the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion [emphasis added] from Russia that it could assist…with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging” to Clinton. The EC further acknowledged that “It was unclear whether he or the Russians were referring to material acquired publicly or through other means. It was also unclear how Mr. Trump’s team reacted to the offer.”

As Maté told MintPress News, this was an “extraordinarily thin basis upon which to investigate an entire presidential campaign.” He added that “upon officially opening Crossfire Hurricane, FBI officials immediately took investigative steps that mirrored the claims in the Steele dossier, even though they were supposedly unaware of it.” The FBI’s first probes into individual Trump campaign figures — Carter Page, Michael Flynn, and Paul Manafort — began in August 2016. All are mentioned in the dossier. Maté concludes:

To accept the official timeline, one has to stipulate that the FBI investigated a Presidential campaign, and then a President, based on a low-level volunteer having ‘suggested’ Trump’s campaign had received ‘some kind of suggestion’ of assistance from Russia. One would also have to accept that the Bureau was not influenced by the far more detailed claims of direct Trump-Russia connections – an alleged conspiracy that would form the heart of the investigation – advanced in the widely-circulating Steele dossier.”

Original article: mintpressnews.com