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Retired U.S. Flag Offficers (Generals/Admirals) Traveling to and Collaborating with Communist China

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Judge for yourself but in my opinion these retired Generals, Admirals and other high ranking former members of Federal Government should have their Security Clearances lifted NOW (if they still have them) and should be investigated for what information they shared with Communist Chinese military officials.

It has been alleged that most received free transportation, lodging,meals, etc. while engaged in these collaborations.

Several retired U.S. flag officers, including four-star generals and admirals, have been reported to collaborate with Chinese military officials in closed-door meetings over the past decade. These interactions have raised concerns about the influence of the Chinese Communist Party on American military leadership.

Retired U.S. Flag Officers Collaborating with China

Numerous high-ranking retired military officials have engaged with Chinese counterparts.

  • Participants — Some of the most powerful retired officers, including former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have participated in these meetings.
  • Topics Discussed — Discussions have included critical issues such as Taiwan, the South China Sea, and cybersecurity.
  • Duration of Engagement — These interactions have reportedly spanned over a decade, indicating a long-term relationship.
  • Chinese Influence — The meetings were organized by a Chinese organization linked to military intelligence, raising concerns about potential influence.

Recent reports indicate that several retired U.S. flag officers, including high-ranking generals and admirals, have engaged in extensive dialogues with Chinese military influence groups over the past decade. This collaboration has raised concerns about the potential implications for U.S. national security and military integrity.

Overview of Collaborations

The involvement of retired U.S. military leaders with Chinese entities has significant implications.

  • Network Formation — The Chinese Communist Party has established a private network involving senior retired U.S. military officials, circumventing direct penetration of the Pentagon.
  • Long-term Engagement — Some retired officers participated in meetings with a Chinese organization linked to Beijing’s military intelligence for over ten years.
  • Public Endorsements — Over 120 retired generals and admirals publicly supported political figures, indicating their ongoing influence.
  • Concerns Raised — Investigations have highlighted the risks associated with these collaborations, suggesting they could undermine U.S. military strategies

Lloyd Austin’s (former US Secy of Defense) interactions with China have been primarily through communication rather than travel. Austin spoke with his Chinese counterpart in April 2024, marking a significant step in military dialogue.

EXCLUSIVE: America’s Top Retired Generals Participated In Secret Beijing Conference Backed By Chinese Spy Group

Some of America’s most senior former military and national-security officials quietly traveled to Beijing to participate in a closed-door “Strategic Security and Stability Dialogue” supported by the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), an organization repeatedly identified by U.S. analysts and members of Congress as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front influence apparatus.

The meeting was billed as a Track II dialogue, meaning unofficial and off the record. But Track II forums are not politically neutral. They are where Beijing cultivates elite Western figures who no longer hold office but still command credibility and converts their presence into political capital.

CUSEF’s role is central.

The foundation was created by former Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, who also served as a vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a core United Front body. For years, CUSEF has sponsored U.S.–China dialogues, trips, and exchanges that critics say consistently advance Beijing-friendly narratives under the language of “mutual understanding.”

This strategy is not subtle. CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping himself has described United Front work as “an important magic weapon for the success of the Party’s cause.” In other words, influence – not tanks or treaties – is how Beijing seeks to shape outcomes abroad.

That context matters when examining who showed up in Beijing.

Continue reading.

America’s Top Generals Walked Straight Into China’s Influence Machine

By Ben Smith

The Chinese Communist Party didn’t need to penetrate the Pentagon. It built a private network around it, and stocked it with some of America’s most senior retired generals and admirals.

That’s the core finding in Natalie Winters’ new report on the Sanya Initiative, a decade-plus military dialogue funded by the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) and run in coordination with the China Association for International Friendly Contact (CAIFC). Congressional investigators have identified CAIFC as a front for the PLA’s former General Political Department, responsible for intelligence collection and “propaganda and perception management.” The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission specifically cited CAIFC’s role in Sanya.

Winters summarized the findings Tuesday on X:

The first delegation, named in CUSEF’s own 2008-2009 annual report, included retired Adm. William “Bill” Owens, former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ronald Fogleman, former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Dennis Reimer, former Pacific Command chief Adm. Joseph Prueher, former Southern Command chief Gen. Charles Wilhelm and former Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John Keane. By 2009, the combined American-Chinese delegation had traveled to Hawaii, Washington and New York, where they sat down with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, members of Congress and senior State Department officials.

The glossy brochures called it a peaceful exchange. What they left out was CAIFC’s actual mandate. Congressional investigators described the group as performing the “dual roles of intelligence collection and propaganda and perception management” as part of the CCP’s broader United Front system, an influence apparatus designed to cultivate foreign elites and neutralize opposition to Beijing’s objectives.

The warnings were public as early as 2011. Mark Stokes, a former Pentagon official and co-author of a landmark study on PLA political warfare, testified before the commission that the Chinese side’s intentions were spelled out in the initiative’s own first report:

“The Chinese side says we wish you would advocate these positions,” Stokes testified, adding that American editorials later appeared with a “stark similarity” to what the Chinese participants had pushed. Hearing co-chair Jeffrey L. Fiedler responded: “Sounds like it was a successful narrative that was placed.”

A 2013 investigation by John Garnaut found a striking imbalance in the initiative’s early deliverables. The American side had agreed to try to delay a Pentagon report on China’s military power until after Taiwan’s election, viewed the U.S. election cycle as an opportunity to shape military relations, and discussed writing opinion pieces to counter critical coverage of China’s military. Garnaut found no comparable list of commitments from the Chinese side. Shortly after those early Sanya meetings, Owens published opinion pieces urging Washington to treat China as a friend and end arms sales to Taiwan.

Continue reading.

©2026 . All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Disloyal Careerists Are Still Haunting The Pentagon’s Halls

Disloyal Careerists Are Still Haunting The Pentagon’s Halls

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I have served alongside government civilian employees for more than 40 years in varying capacities and watched too many good people in uniform and the civil service choose to not speak out instead of putting the mission first.

Mission first is the standard. What we saw from Pentagon employee Brandon Newsom is a good example — and he is not an isolated case.

Newsom, a 16-year Pentagon employee and Director of Business Operations in the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, was caught on hidden camera by James O’Keefe admitting he intended to stay in place precisely so he could “undo whatever’s been done” by the Trump administration once the political winds shifted.

“I have the influence… I can undo whatever’s been done,” he said. “When the election changes… I want to stay and stick it out so that when the time comes, I can undo whatever’s been done.”

He openly dismissed the president as a “textbook narcissist” and called U.S. policy toward Iran “completely stupid … driven on one man’s ego.”

He even targeted the voluntary monthly prayer service held by Secretary Pete Hegseth and the policy that allows senior officials to be held accountable and removed.

This is not policy disagreement. This is calculated resistance by a career government employee who views the elected leadership of the United States as an inconvenience to be waited out and then reversed.

Newsom admitted he lacked formal authority but planned to use the influence of his position to slow-roll or reverse lawful directives.

That is the textbook definition of the “disloyal government employee problem” that has plagued the Pentagon and the broader federal bureaucracy for years.

Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao did the right thing by placing Newsom on administrative leave immediately. Accountability must follow. Suspension is the minimum. Removal should be the outcome.

Anyone who takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution, then plots to undermine the policies of the duly elected commander-in-chief because they personally dislike them, has no business drawing a taxpayer paycheck inside the Department of War.

I have seen this mindset before.

Careerists who treat the Pentagon as their permanent fiefdom rather than an institution that serves the American people and the warfighters who put their lives on the line.

They wrap their resistance in the language of “institutional knowledge” or “continuity,” but the reality is often personal ideology and self-preservation.

They stay, they slow-walk, they leak and they wait for the next administration that better matches their preferences.

Meanwhile, readiness suffers, lethality is diluted and the troops pay the price.

Civilian control of the military is not optional. It is foundational. Government employees, whether uniformed or civilian, do not get a veto over the voters. They execute lawful orders or they leave. Period.

The idea that a GS-15 or SES can sit in the Pentagon for 16 years and openly scheme to reverse the policies of an elected administration is corrosive.

It destroys trust, invites more of the same, and signals to our adversaries that America’s defense establishment is divided against itself.

Secretary Hegseth and the Trump administration have made clear they intend to restore warfighting focus, cut bureaucratic bloat, and hold people accountable.

That mission cannot succeed if the building is still full of people who view those changes as temporary inconveniences to be undone the moment the political calendar turns.

Root them out. Use the tools already available, and strengthen them if necessary, to ensure loyalty to the Constitution and the chain of command, not to personal agendas or Beltway orthodoxy.

I spent more than three decades in uniform because I believed in the mission and the country. Most of the men and women still serving feel the same way.

They deserve leaders and civilian counterparts who share that commitment, not careerists waiting for their chance to “undo” the will of the American people.

Fire them. Replace them with people who understand that service means executing the policies of the elected government, not subverting them.

Our national security depends on it.

AUTHOR

Col. Rob Maness, USAF ret

STARRS Board of Advisor and Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel, 9/11 Pentagon Survivor, Author of “What You Can Do About It: Taking Real Action Against Corruption, Radicalism, and Moral Decay to Save America”, and Host of The Rob Maness Show.

First published on The Daily Caller

EDITORS NOTE: This STARRS column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Leftist Laughable Hypocrisy

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Yes, I know, you read the title of this missive and said to yourself, “Which one?”

Yes, the entire basis of Marxism is deeply rooted in hypocrisy, but last week Martha MacCallum had it on full display. She was interviewing a young fella who was the co-director of the NYC Democratic Socialists of America chapter.

Ms. MacCallum had obviously done her research and led this helpless imbecile right into a textbook U-shaped ambush.

She asked him about his parents, who had immigrated to the United States from Peru. His response was that they did so to flee American imperialism and capitalism.

She then reminded him that they fled during the time of the rise of the Shining Path, a Maoist Communist insurgency movement. Her response to the young man was that he didn’t make sense. I would certainly agree.

If American imperialism and capitalism were something worth fleeing, then why not just stay in Peru and support the Shining Path? After all, they were a communist insurgency. Is that not what Marxists desire?

And to admit that his parents “supposedly” fled Peru to escape American imperialism and capitalism to come to America, home of the free-market, free-enterprise economic system that has benefited far more people than a socialist economic model, is delusional hypocrisy.

Therein lies the fundamental reason why it is hard to take these Marxist propagandists as intelligent.

I certainly do take them seriously because they are delusional enough to enact violence to force one to succumb to their insanity.

I remember as a young Army Lieutenant going behind the “Iron Curtain” and seeing for myself what this delusion is all about.

My first trip through Checkpoint Charlie to East Berlin was in 1985, and it was very eye-opening for this kid from the inner city of Atlanta.

All that which I had studied at the University of Tennessee about Marxism, socialism, and communism was staring me right in the face.

And we were well aware of the East German Stasi secret police following us. The poor condition of the roads, streets, streetcars, and buildings was apparent. The lack of “diversity” in automobile selection was startling. I saw what government “rent-controlled” housing looked like.

But what was most telling and unforgettable was the look of despair, despondency, and lack of joy on the faces of the people. It is truly as Sir Winston Churchill described it,

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

Marxist ideology is indeed a creed of ignorance that believes it is their right, their objective, to make us all equal. It is a philosophy of governance that does not reward individual achievement or exceptionalism.

As Barack Obama once quipped, “If you own a business, you didn’t build that.” How utterly offensive and condescending to the indomitable American entrepreneurial spirit that made this nation the envy of the world, which was on full display to the world during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

The world got to see and experience this nation, our America, and came to the realization that the Marxist leftist propaganda media had been lying to them.

Take, for example, the laudatory comments about Waffle House, founded in my home state of Georgia by two former World War II veterans, Joe Rogers Sr. and Tom Forkner. Imagine an America where their desire, their idea, their innovation would have been stymied by the likes of an Obama, worse, Mamdani.

I often ask, why don’t these delusional American Marxists just move to North Korea?

Certainly, after hearing the new British Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, speak, they should go there. Something tells me that it will not be long before the Brits are on their 8th PM in 10 years.

Cuba is collapsing. The Soviet Union collapsed. South America is rejecting Marxist governance. But here, we have a group of incompetents who are the pure definition of insanity and believe that they can do Marxism better, better than Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, and the Sandinistas.

America is the longest consecutive-running Constitutional Republic that the world has known, but these Marxists seek to destroy it by completely decimating our Constitution. Heck, they do not even want an America at all, since they demand open borders.

Totalitarians are delusional, and their hypocrisy lies in the lies that they tell themselves.

Even the Chinese Communist Party recognized that the capitalist system could be leveraged in such a way to sustain their communist ideology, which is why we should seek to isolate and expel them from the world economy since their long-term objective is the triumph of communism; capitalism is just a means to that end.

America in 2026 is facing an ideological choice, not a political one.

And how interesting that this choice for our future would come in the year of our 250th anniversary of independence.

Truthfully, for the American Marxists, their hypocrisy is rooted in an acute inability to love their own country because of their own personal character failures and shortcomings.

There are many places where they, along with their Islamist cohorts, can go and live in their tyrannical utopia.

No, their joy will come in destroying the joy of those who love America and ushering in their definition of equity, the equality of outcomes that leads to the equality of misery.

Steadfast and Loyal.

First published on The American Constitutional Rights Union website

AUTHOR

Lt. Col. Allen West, USA ret

Executive Director of the American Constitutional Rights Union and STARRS Board of Advisors.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Marxism Is Deeply Embedded at America’s Military Service Academies

Disloyal Careerists Are Still Haunting The Pentagon’s Halls

Brig. Gen. Christopher Walker on his DEI experience in the military

EDITORS NOTE: This STARRS column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Politics By Other Means

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Inspired by his service in the Prussian and Russian armies in the Napoleonic wars at the start of the 19th Century, Carl von Clausewitz has left us with many famous sayings from his unfinished treatise, On War, published after his death in 1830.

Among them was that the “fog of war” often obscures what is really happening on the battlefield. Another, which is my theme for today, is that “war is politics by other means.”

President Trump has been criticized in recent weeks by the left and the right for his repeated threats to launch yet another “massive” military strike on Iran, only to relent at the last minute in hopes of some last minute breakthrough in negotiations that would satisfy the two major U.S. goals in this war: the unconditional reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to international shipping, and the end of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

So far, each time it has happened, the Iranians have backed away from a negotiated settlement, either by new drone or missile strikes against ships in the Strait of Hormuz, or by instructing their proxies to carry out attacks against our Gulf allies. (In recent weeks, they have used Shiite militias in Iraq to attack civilian infrastructure in Kuwait, and the Houthis in Yemen to hit Saudi vessels in the Red Sea). And each time that happens, the United States responds by taking out IRGC assets in southern Iran.

The President has repeatedly expressed his reluctance to inflict massive damage on Iran’s infrastructure, all the while threatening to do so should the Iranian regime not agree to his conditions.

I believe he is trying to find the sweet spot of just enough military pressure to achieve his political goals, without inflicting what he sees as unnecessary and unfortunate damage.

But so far, he has failed to find that sweet spot. The regime — or whoever is calling the shots in Iran — responds with increased aggression: more missiles, more drones, and more irredentist demands.

The latest, on Thursday, was a claim by the Iranian parliament that the regime had reached an agreement with Oman over joint control of the Strait of Hormuz that would inflict a toll of between 5% to 7% on ships transiting the Strait that would bring in an estimated $385 million per day to the Revolutionary Guards to oppress the Iranian people, and to use to build more drones and missiles and to arm their proxies.

The alleged deal would also bar ships from the United States, Israel, and any other country opposing the “Axis of Resistance” from transiting the Strait. That designation would bar Saudi Arabian ships, since the Saudis have been at war with the Houthis for over a decade.

Clearly, such a deal is not just unacceptable: it is outrageous.

If you read the international media, you might forget the whole reason we are even negotiating over the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. It’s because Iran mined the customary passageways in the middle of the Strait at the beginning of the war, and no one has yet removed those mines.

That’s why there is all this talk of the “northern route” transiting Iran’s territorial waters, and the “southern route” that uses Oman’s.

The historic passageway through the Strait transits through international waters. But Iran closed that passageway at the onset of the conflict, an act of war in violation of the UN Law of the Sea Treaty that should have triggered unanimous international action, spearheaded by the UN Security Council.

If it weren’t for the support that Russia and China have been providing Iran, the United States could have gone to the United Nations and invoked Chapter VII of the UN charter that authorizes member nations to use “all necessary measures” — including military action — to restore international peace and security, just as we did twice in wars against Saddam Hussein.

We actually tried that in May, with the predictable result that both the Chinese and the Russians threatened to veto any resolution against Iran.

Since then, both the Brits and the French have said they would join an international mine-sweeping force, and then promptly backed out when it became obvious that mines were not only still present in the Strait but that the IRGC was going to attack any ships trying to remove them.

So much for the international “order.” And so much for our allies.

That leaves President Trump with the course he has followed in recent weeks: apply just enough force to keep the IRGC on its heels, while not triggering a massive spike in oil prices or spooking international markets.

He has succeeded on all three counts, extremely significant accomplishments.

But the United States cannot just “walk away and go home” if our diplomacy fails, as Vice-president JD Vance suggested recently in his very unfortunate three-hour appearance on the Joe Rogan show.

There is that pesky second demand that Iran give up its nuclear ambitions. On Wednesday, reports from Israel resurfaced an earlier claim by the current IRGC Chief, Ahmad Vahidi, while he was Interior Minister, that Iran would continue to develop nuclear weapons as long as the United States and Israel possessed them. “If they disarm, we will disarm,” he reportedly said.

There has been some parsing of that quote in recent days. One Iranian commentator claimed that the correct quote was this: “As long as the United States and Israel possess nuclear weapons, activities related to national security will not cease.”

Sorry, but in IRGC-speak, that means exactly the same thing.

In the end, whether Vahidi made those public comments or not makes little difference. There is no other explanation for the massive expenditures on uranium enrichment, buried nuclear sites, the Iranian regime’s absolute refusal to discuss its nuclear programs or the recent revelations about Mount Kalang (aka “Pickaxe Mountain”).

The Iranian regime is developing nuclear weapons and thank God they don’t yet have them or they would have already used them on Israel or on us, either in direct attacks or in EMP mode to destroy our electric power grid and send us back to the 1880s, when the United States could support a population of between 80 to 90 million.

This is a regime that has already acted out its intentions to wipe Israel off the map, and has shown its willingness to destroy the entire civilian infrastructure of its Persian Gulf neighbors, including their destination plants.

If anyone has any doubts as to why President Trump is fighting this war, just think of what the IRGC would do if it actually had operational nuclear warheads.

I discuss this, as well as the latest reports of Chinese and Russian weapons shipments to Iran and Russian threats to NATO, on this week’s Prophecy Today Weekend. As always, you can listen live on 104.9 FM or 550 AM in the Jacksonville, Florida, area, or by using the Jacksonville Way Radio app.

Yours in freedom.

©2026 . All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: While the West Surrenders to Islam, Iran Is Fighting to Break Free From It

Website: kentimmerman.com

Ken Timmerman’s 14th book of non-fiction, THE IRAN HOUSE: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue, can be ordered by clicking here or by viewing my author’s page, here. 

Raising Olives in Provence, can be ordered by clicking here.

While the West Surrenders to Islam, Iran Is Fighting to Break Free From It

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The Awakening of Persia: Why Iran Stands Alone Against Islam

Enough is enough. Iran’s soul is not defined by Islam. Its spirit cannot be caged by  a barbarian ideology imposed upon the civilisation of Iran. For generations, this cult has fractured the nation, dimmed its brilliance, and chained its people to shadows. Islam has brought only division, oppression, and shadows — never peace.

Telling Iranians to celebrate Islam is like asking someone to cherish the very weapon that scarred them, simply because they later polished it.

Iran is not the land of clerics and fanaticism. It is the land of Zarathustra, the legacy of Cyrus the Great — a civilization built on dignity, wisdom, and leadership long before desert chaos swept in from Arabia. It’s time to reclaim that greatness.

The day will come when Western nations look toward Iran — the nation that broke free from Islam’s grip. Doubt it now, but history will prove it. I’ve tried to awaken America for decades, but America resists salvation. Welcome back to Persia.

While the streets of major European capitals and American cities echo with endless apologies, accommodations, and systemic catering to Islamic orthodoxy, a profound, historic rebellion is quietly brewing in the heart of the Middle East. Western governments, blinded by institutional guilt, cultural relativism, and political correctness, bend over backward to appease an ideology that fundamentally opposes Western liberal values. Leaders in London, Paris, Berlin, and Washington fall over themselves to fund, protect, and normalize religious dogmatism, believing they are championing diversity. In reality, they are importing and nurturing the very intolerant systems that their own Enlightenment fought centuries to escape.

Every major Western nation bows to the altar of political sensitivity, too paralyzed by fear of backlash to address the authoritarian core of Islamic governance. They tolerate the intolerable, normalize the regressive, and silence domestic critics under the guise of progressivism.

Yet, across the globe, one nation-and one nation alone-stands as the living, breathing antidote to this global capitulation. That nation is Iran.

To understand modern Iran, one must look past the turbulent veneer of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the iron-fisted tyranny of the mullahs. The current regime does not represent the soul of the Iranian people; it is an occupying ideological force holding an ancient culture hostage.

For over fourteen centuries, Iranians have endured an identity crisis born from conquest. The Arab invasion dismantled the mighty Sasanian Empire, replacing a civilization of philosophy, science, art, and light with a system of absolute religious submission. Zoroastrianism-the ancient Iranian faith centered on Good Thoughts, Good Words, and Good Deeds-was systematically suppressed, replaced by a theology that many contemporary Iranians view as fundamentally foreign to their national ethos.

Today, the citizens of Iran are waging a silent, daily war against their oppressors. From underground Christian conversions and secular defiance to massive nationwide protests led by brave women burning mandatory headscarves, the Iranian populace is rejecting the Islamic Republic from the ground up. They are proving, with every act of resistance, that Islam is a garment forced upon them at sword-point, not a heritage chosen by their hearts.

When we strip away the dark theology imposed upon the nation, what remains is the immortal spirit of Persia. This is the land that gave the world the Cyrus Cylinder-widely celebrated as the world’s first declaration of human rights. It is the birthplace of astronomical innovation, breathtaking architecture, poetry that speaks of universal human love, and an administrative genius that united millions under a banner of cultural and religious tolerance.

To ask an Iranian to tie their national identity to the clerics ruling Tehran is a profound historical insult. It is asking a proud lion to celebrate the cage it was born in. The current regime relies on terror, censorship, and ideological indoctrination precisely because it knows that the moment freedom returns, the entire Islamic superstructure will collapse like a house of cards.

Look at the West today. Decades of institutional surrender have left American and European societies fractured, defensive, and culturally confused. Leaders preach tolerance while eroding the foundational pillars of free speech and individual liberty. Having spent four decades watching the systematic degradation of Western political courage, it becomes painfully clear: America does not want to be saved. It is sleepwalking into its own cultural dissolution, trading its heritage for the hollow applause of globalist appeasers.

Meanwhile, Iranians are paying in blood to undo the damage of religious totalitarianism. They are the only people on earth who have lived under a pure, unadulterated Islamic theocracy for decades-and because of that, they are the only people who truly see it for what it is. They have lived through the nightmare, tasted the poison, and rejected the cureless disease.

History moves in cycles. Empires rise, fall, and occasionally rise again from the ashes of their own destruction. The day is coming when the dark cloud hanging over Tehran will lift, swept away by an unstoppable wave of secular nationalism, cultural renaissance, and historical reclamation.

When that day arrives, the dynamic will flip entirely. A free, secularized Persia-liberated from the shackles of religious fanaticism-will emerge as the most advanced, enlightened, and culturally vibrant nation in the region. Disillusioned citizens from the West, fleeing societies crushed by their own moral cowardice and cultural surrender, will look eastward.

They will look to the land that dared to stare down theocratic tyranny and win. Welcome to Persia.

©2026 . All rights reserved.

Critically Thinking about Dr. Fauci — Part 3

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I know, I had said that there would only be Part 1 and Part 2…

But as I went along I thought of something that warrants an additional write-up. It’s this: one of the primary deceptions used by Dr Fauci and his minions, is to make technical references that he knows that very few citizens really understand.

One of the most frequent deceptions used is to cite statistics. For example, regarding medical issues, the decision as to whether or not a treatment is desirable comes down to two issues: Effectiveness and Safety. (After these, other matters might then come into play, e.g., cost, availability, etc.)

A “treatment” could be a vaccine, mechanical therapy (radiation), surgery, prescription medication, supplements, dietary changes, lifestyle changes, etc.

But let’s just think about COVID-19. Dr. Fauci (and other healthcare “experts”) had these treatments to evaluate: vaccine, prescription medication, supplements, dietary changes, lifestyle changes, etc

Accurately Explaining Effectiveness</h4

How Dr. Fauci and his allies (e.g., pharmaceutical companies) portray effectiveness (of drugs, vaccines, etc.) to the public was deceptive. The “effectiveness” that was almost always shown was relative risk.

A more meaningful number would have been to show absolute risk. Here are two independent citations where others have (so far unsuccessfully) made a case for the same thing:

Example 1: This is the position stated in an important FDA advisory publication. A key conclusion (see page 60) was that the public is: “unduly influenced when risk information is presented using a relative risk approach; this can result in suboptimal decisions. Thus, an absolute risk format should be used.”

Example 2: The CONSORT 2010 Statement — Updated Guidelines for Reporting Parallel Group Randomized Trials states: “… presentation of both absolute and relative effect sizes is recommended…”

Since statistics are over most people’s heads, I’ll try to explain the difference in layperson terms. I’ll use COVID-19 vaccines as a telling example…

Here are three tables based on two studies: here and here. (If you’d like further elaboration, here is an MD’s good discussion about those two studies.)

The first table shows the relative risk reduction (relative effectiveness) of several popular COVID-19 vaccines:

Most people would say that these look like good numbers — and the ones above 90% are VERY good. That’s exactly what Dr. Fauci, etc. want us to think… Now let’s fill out the next column: absolute risk reduction (absolute effectiveness) …

Whoa! The absolute effectiveness numbers are radically different — and MUCH less! What does this mean in the real world?

A third variable might be the easiest to understand: how many people need to be treated (injected) to prevent ONE case of COVID-19?

This is called NNT (Number Needed to Treat = 1/ARR). Here are two studies (here and here) that delve into the merit of using NNT. The table below shows what NNT is for the same COVID-19 injections:

NOTE: The exact numbers here may be slightly different due to several variables, and are not important. What is significant here is to see the extraordinary differences between Relative and Absolute Risk Reductions.

NNT Observation —

Let’s look at a real-world example… If citizens realized that roughly one hundred people had to be injected before ONE case of COVID-19 was prevented, how many people would have said:

“I’m willing to risk the known potentially serious side-effects of these injections, plus accept the fact that zero long-term studies have been completed — all hoping that I’ll hit the jackpot and be the lucky one in 100± people who is prevented from getting COVID-19”?

An Even Better Analysis —

Some very smart people said let’s take the NNT data one step further — and add the treatment COST to it! In other words, if two treatments have the same NNT, but one costs 10 times the other, shouldn’t we factor that in? Look at this fabulous COVID-19 table:

Compare two popular COVID-19 early oral treatment competitors: Ivermectin and Paxlovid. To get the same end result (save one life from COVID-19) we can spend $26 for Ivermectin or $881,260 for Paxlovid!

Note also that cost and impacts of side effects are NOT taken into account here. The side-effects for taking Ivermectin are very low, while the potential side-effects for Paxlovid are rather high. In other words, the cost difference between Ivermectin and Paxlovid is likely MUCH more than what is shown in this table!

The Bottom Line — Part 3

Dr. Science (Fauci) — and his expert allies — KNEW all this information.

As such, they should have prominently shown the public BOTH Relative and Absolute numbers, as well as NNT. This is not some academic matter, as it has SUBSTANTIAL bearing on assuring that Americans are able to make an informed choice when they agree to an injection or to take a drug.

Without these facts, citizens are not only severely handicapped, but are almost totally incapable of making an appropriate decision for themselves and their loved ones. Dr. Fauci could have fixed this, but chose not to.

PS — Here is an excellent two-minute video that explains the difference between Absolute and Relative Risk reduction…

©2026 All rights reserved.

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The Revolution Is On, Comrades: Hasan Piker Says No Reconciliation With Dem Establishment

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My latest in PJ Media is a VIP article.

Abdul El-Sayed is the Democrat Party’s candidate for the United States Senate from the state of Michigan, and he is just the latest on an ever-growing list of Democrat candidates who would deride Uncle Joe Stalin as a reactionary capitalist roader. The Democrat establishment is feeling the heat, but one of El-Sayed’s most fervent and prominent boosters, the fiendishly anti-American and antisemitic social media star Hasan Piker, is in no mood for reconciliation.

On the contrary: flush with El-Sayed’s victory, Piker is ready to move in for the kill and take over the Democrat Party, which is already a hollowed-out shell, for the authoritarians and oligarchs who claim they’re the champions of the common people. Piker insists that there will be no “mending bridges” with the establishment Democrats. Like Stalin rooting out the “rightists” (including many of the Bolsheviks who helped establish the Soviet Union and even some who helped Stalin gain absolute power) and sending them to their deaths, Piker wants the Democrat Old Guard to leave the arena, giving up the hollowed-out shell that is today’s Democrat Party and allowing the Marxists to gain full and official control.

There is more. Read the rest here.

How much has AIPAC spent against Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed? And why?

Pro-Israel group unleashes its spending power to help elect Haley Stevens to US Senate against progressive doctor.

By: Al Jazeera on Google

By Ali Harb, Al Jazeera, 2 Aug 2026:

Dearborn, Michigan – “Down with AIPAC,” the crowd chanted at a campaign rally for Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed in a suburb of Detroit.

AIPAC – the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — has become the main topic of conversation in the Democratic primary in Michigan, which analysts say could affect the party’s approach to Israel for years to come.

Michigan state legislator Alabas Farhat vowed at the rally in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn on Friday that voters would make the pro-Israel group “burn” millions of dollars by electing El-Sayed to the US Senate.

“The status quo has told us for a long time that we don’t have money for modern schools; we don’t have money for clean water to drink, for health care, for affordable housing,” Farhat told the rally.

“But when we call up money to go and bomb children in Gaza, to do an ethnic cleansing campaign in South Lebanon – this administration seems to find that money.”

Several speakers, including Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, also took to the stage but the name of El-Sayed’s opponent in Tuesday’s election, Congresswoman Haley Stevens, was hardly mentioned.

Instead, AIPAC – which is breaking records in campaign spending to defeat candidates critical of Israeli policies, such as El-Sayed — was repeatedly brought up, booed and denounced.

El-Sayed, a progressive epidemiologist and former public health official, is running against Stevens, a four-term Congress member, to replace retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters. The winner will face former Congressman Mike Rogers, the likely Republican nominee, in November.

Michigan state legislator Alabas Farhat vowed at the rally in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn on Friday that voters would make the pro-Israel group “burn” millions of dollars by electing El-Sayed to the US Senate.

“The status quo has told us for a long time that we don’t have money for modern schools; we don’t have money for clean water to drink, for health care, for affordable housing,” Farhat told the rally.

“But when we call up money to go and bomb children in Gaza, to do an ethnic cleansing campaign in South Lebanon – this administration seems to find that money.”

Several speakers, including Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, also took to the stage but the name of El-Sayed’s opponent in Tuesday’s election, Congresswoman Haley Stevens, was hardly mentioned.

Instead, AIPAC — which is breaking records in campaign spending to defeat candidates critical of Israeli policies, such as El-Sayed — was repeatedly brought up, booed and denounced.

AUTHOR

Robert Spencer

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El-Sayed’s Michigan Victory: The Communist, Antisemitic Takeover of the Democrat Party Is No Longer an Aberration

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An Abdul El-Sayed supporter said voters are “stupid” and the best way to win is to hide the truth.

Watching Islamo-Communist Mamdani get booed at an NYPD event on Staten Island is pretty hilarious.

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

I am happy to be able to offer you a 5% discount on becoming a VIP member at PJ Media. Just enter the code SPENCER when you sign up here.

Senate Democrats Boycott Senate Hearing on Muslim Brotherhood

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Standing with America’s enemies.

WATCH: Ted Cruz Leads Senate Judiciary Hearing On ‘Confronting The Muslim Brotherhood Network In America’

Understandable move since the Muslim Brotherhood is now a significant part of the Democratic Party’s political operation.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and other Senate Dems on the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, Alex Padilla, and Peter Welch issued a snippy statement on their boycott of the “Hidden in Plain Sight: Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood Network in America” hearing by Sen. Ted Cruz.

The statement falsely claimed that this was  “scapegoating Muslims” and claimed that “Democrats have no intention of indulging this political creepshow, particularly after the recent violence targeting places of faith.” A number of such attacks have targeted synagogues and Jews, and the Muslim Brotherhood, the subject of the investigation, has remained a vector for Islamic terrorism.

CAIR, whose leadership supported the Oct 7 attacks carried out by Hamas, the Gaza arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, and which is  itself linked to the Brotherhood, issued a statement denouncing what it called “persistent and manufactured anti-Muslim fearmongering” and complained that the witnesses were “known for promoting anti-Muslim narratives”.

The witnesses in question are respected figures who “include Lara Burns, a former FBI special agent and senior research fellow at The George Washington University’s Program on Extremism; Arielle Klepach, senior counsel at the National Jewish Advocacy Center; and Kyle Shideler, a senior analyst for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy.”

Senate Dems chose to stand with CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood over law enforcement and counterterrorism professionals which is to say, standing with America’s enemies.

AUTHOR

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Democrats Boycott Explosive Senate Hearing on Muslim Brotherhood Network’s Growing Grip on America

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Supreme Court deals blow to Palestinian Authority in $656 million judgment for U.S. terror victims

Jason Arday and the Stupidity of the Intellectuals

Posts Blaming Israel for Ceuta Migrant Crisis Get 100 Million Views

Greece: Muslim migrant says he murdered Scottish migration advocate because he is a jihadist and she was a Christian

Jordan calls emergency meeting of Muslim foreign ministers on ‘imminent threat of Israeli takeover of Temple Mount’

France: Muslim Grooming Gangs and the Young Girls They Turn Into Prostitutes

Canada: After complaints, Muslim police officers face penalty for praising Oct. 7 for surge in Islam converts

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

U.S. Blockades Iranian Ports

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What to know about the Iran war:

The U.S. restarted a blockade on Iranian ports Tuesday afternoon and launched dozens of additional strikes on Iran, marking the fourth consecutive night of attacks.

President Trump said it will get “really bad” next week, with strikes on Iranian bridges and power plants, if Iran doesn’t cut a deal.

Mr. Trump said he “decided to replace” a planned 20% fee on cargo through the Strait of Hormuz with trade and investment deals from Gulf states, after shipping industry experts balked at the fee. Iran has not ruled out charging its own tolls for use of the Strait of Hormuz, and has threatened ships that sail through the waterway without its permission.

The price of crude oil has shot up over the last two days as U.S.-Iran fighting resumes, including Iranian attacks on cargo ships.

©2026 . All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Extortion 17 — 15th Year Anniversary. Never Forget Our ‘Fallen Angels’!

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On August 6, 2011 – three months after members of Navy SEAL Team Six killed Osama Bin Laden – Taliban forces took down a United States helicopter, call sign Extortion 17. 

The attack killed the Air National Guard crew, seven unidentified members of the Afghan military, and 17 members of Navy SEAL Team Six – warrior brothers from the same team that had killed Osama Bin Laden just 90 days prior. Were the seven Afghan soldiers aboard that helicopter really undercover Taliban who either maneuvered the chopper within easy range of being shot down or sabotaged it from within?

Were the SEALs sacrificed on the altar of political correctness and deliberately flown into a known Taliban hot zone?

Don Brown, a former US Navy JAG officer stationed at the Pentagon and a former special assistant United States attorney, re-creates the wartime action, tells the life stories of the elite warriors our nation lost on that day and tears apart the official military explanation of the incident contained in the infamous Colt Report, which reveals either gross incompetence or a massive cover-up.

©2026 . All rights reserved.

USA vs ICC — Rubio Vows to Dismantle International Criminal Court “Brick by Brick”

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The ICC’s witch hunt against America and Israel has imperiled its continued existence.

Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio set the proverbial cat among the pigeons with his recent declaration of his intention to “dismantle” the International Criminal Court (ICC) and urged other nations to join in the effort. Rubio launched the campaign, vowing to employ “all the tools at our government’s disposal” to “dismantle the ICC, brick by brick.” Against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s escalating actions against the ICC, Rubio accused the court of “waging a war against our country, not with bullets or missiles,” but with “the force of so-called international law.”

A warped sense of justice?

The administration’s ire against the ICC dates back to President Trump’s first term, when it targeted the ICC for seeking to investigate alleged war crimes committed by US forces in Afghanistan. Indeed, the second Trump administration has imposed a slew of sanctions against ICC officials for their attempts to investigate the US and Israel—neither of which is even a member of the ICC.

But the new trigger for the White House’s intensifying its punitive action against the ICC was its scandalous issue of arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

In a feeble ICC attempt to feign evenhandedness, warrants were also issued against Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, Ismail Haniyeh—after their deaths—which, quite apart from the absurdity of equating the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre with those who responded to it, underscores the warped sense of justice the ICC purports to administer.

Gravely misinformed or grossly dishonest

The figure behind these measures was ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, who initiated the request for the arrest warrants. Khan has since been forced to leave office following multiple allegations of sexual misconduct. According to some sources, the arrest warrants were motivated, at least in part, to divert attention from these allegations.

Significantly, Khan is not the only chief ICC prosecutor against whom allegations of severe impropriety (conducted before, during, or after their term in office) have been leveled.

For example, Fatou Bensouda (2012-2021), who prior to her appointment as Chief ICC prosecutor held top posts in the Gambian judiciary under the brutal military dictatorship that ruled Gambia from 1994 to 2017. Bensouda claimed she had no knowledge of the human rights abuses of the regime she served. However, given her seniority and long association with the regime, this leaves one to ponder which is worse: Whether she really was oblivious of the abuses or whether she was not— whether she was gravely ill-informed or whether she was grossly deceitful.

Sexual misconduct & financial shenanigans?

Likewise, Bensouda’s predecessor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, the ICC’s first prosecutor (2003–2012), also fell under a cloud of suspicion—both while in office and after leaving it.

Thus, Ocampo was accused of sexual misconduct (2005) in South Africa by an ICC whistleblower. Although Ocampo’s ICC cronies dismissed the charges, the whistleblower was vindictively dismissed by Ocampo himself—despite the ICC’s own internal Disciplinary Advisory Board’s call to rescind the dismissal. Undeterred, the whistleblower appealed to the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which found resoundingly in his favor, awarding him substantial monetary compensation, casting further doubts on the ICC’s integrity.

After leaving the ICC in 2012, Ocampo became the subject of several allegations concerning his financial and professional activities. (Also see here) These included the abuse of his position as former ICC prosecutor, shady financial shenanigans, and severe conflicts of interest. These allegations stemmed primarily from the far-reaching 2017 “Secrets of the Court” investigation by the European Investigative Collaborations, a nonprofit network of leading investigative journalists and media organizations established in 2015 to conduct collaborative cross-border investigations into issues of public interest. While the allegations did not result in actual judicial convictions, the ethical issues they raised served to tarnish his reputation, and, by association, that of the ICC’s judicial practices.

The Israeli angle

For Israel, Rubio’s initiative is a welcome development. For it serves to undermine the legitimacy of the ICC measures against senior Israeli personnel and expose just how the hypocrisy-ridden ICC has strayed from its lofty founding principles and noble aims.

For the fallen Karim Khan and his cronies, it perhaps reflects that Biblical maxim in Numbers 24:9: Whoever blesses Israel will be blessed. And whoever curses Israel will be cursed.”

©2026 . All rights reserved.

16 Trump-Endorsed MAGA Candidates Have Won Their Primaries

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The Trump endorsement continues to be the most powerful weapon in politics.

GOP Rep. John James to face off against Democrat Jocelyn Benson in Michigan governor race

By Ryan King

DETROIT — Rep. John James clinched the Republican nomination for Michigan governor Tuesday, teeing up a tough general election contest against Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.

James, a two-time Senate candidate who has repped parts of suburban Detroit since 2023, overcame a primary challenge from businessman Perry Johnson, who made a longshot bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

James led 50% to 36% with about a fourth of the votes counted when the Associated Press called the race at 10:24 p.m. EDT.

Backed by President Trump, James was considered the front-runner throughout the campaign and solidified his status with former state AG Mike Cox, former state House Speaker Tom Leonard, and Michigan Senate GOP Leader Aric Nesbitt all dropping out and endorsing him.

Elsewhere in the Mitten State, Rep. John James (R-Mich.) clinched the GOP nomination for governor, teeing up a tough general election contest against Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.

James, a two-time Senate candidate who narrowly missed out on unseating Sen. Gary Peters in 2020, has repped parts of suburban Detroit since 2023 and bested businessman and former GOP presidential candidate Perry Johnson by about 15 percentage points in the Republican primary.

Benson, who has served as Michigan secretary of state since 2019, cruised to victory in her primary over Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson by a whopping 66 percentage points.

James trails Benson by 7.3 percentage points in the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls.

Michiganders have not elected a Republican to the governorship since Rick Snyder won a second term in 2014.

James was one of several Trump-backed candidates that won Tuesday night.USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

Trump-backed candidates notch victories

James was one of several Trump-endorsed candidates who emerged victorious Tuesday night, further cementing the importance of the commander-in-chief’s support.

In Michigan’s 10th Congressional District – the seat being vacated by James – Army veteran Michael Bouchard cruised to victory with 72.2% of the vote after getting Trump’s stamp of approval in June.

Republicans are forecast to have a slight edge in the district, which covers Detroit suburbs in Oakland and Macomb counties, and Bouchard will benefit from a famous family name. His father Michael has served as Oakland County Sheriff since 1999 and as a state senator prior to that.

In Kansas, state Senate President Ty Masterson emerged from a field of seven GOP candidates to claim the nomination for governor with 40.5% of the vote.

Trump endorsed Masterson in May, calling it a “great honor” to support such a “fantastic candidate.”

Masterson is running to replace term-limited Democrat Gov. Laura Kelly. Like Michigan, Kansas last elected a GOP governor in 2014, when Sam Brownback edged out a re-election win.

4. Cori Bush falls short in comeback attempt 

Incumbent Rep. Wesley Bell (D-Mo.) easily fended off a bitter primary challenge from former “Squad” Rep. Cori Bush, who had vowed revenge against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) after her 2024 defeat.

Bush had hoped to ride the wave of anti-Israel sentiment that has propelled several far-left Democrats this cycle back to her old House seat.

However, she mustered only 36.9% of the vote in Missouri’s deep-blue 1st Congressional District, while Bell garnered 59.2% support.

In a wild rant after her 2024 loss, Bush declared that she had been radicalized and that AIPAC needed “to be afraid.”

“Let me say this, AIPAC, I’m coming to tear your kingdom down,” she said.

Bell received nearly $9 million in support from AIPAC and the pro-Israel group’s aligned super-PACs in 2024, but only about $3.1 million this go-around.

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

FBI SHOCKER: Bureau Secretly Probed Trump as a Russian Asset for Firing Comey

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The FBI should have been investigating Comey. Instead, it carried on his treason – proof of just how deeply and irretrievably broken the agency had become.

Comey’s was indicted on two federal counts of making false statements and obstructing Congress regarding his 2020 testimony on media leaks. He “willfully and knowingly” lied during a September 30, 2020, Senate Judiciary Committee hearing by stating he never authorized anyone at the FBI to serve as an anonymous source for news reports about sensitive investigations.

Furthermore, he knowingly and willfully made a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States:

He knowingly and willfully did transmit in interstate and foreign commerce a communication that contained a threat to kill the President, Donald J. Trump

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Tuesday made it clear during a presser: “You are not allowed to threaten the President of the United States of America.”

FBI Used Comey Firing To Open New Russia Hoax Investigation Using Debunked Information

By: Breccan F. Thies •

As part of its Russia collusion hoax lawfare attacks on President Donald Trump, the FBI opened a “subcomponent investigation” of Crossfire Hurricane, treating Trump as a criminal subject based on already-debunked information linking him to Russia, according to a Trump administration official.

The sub-investigation, known as “Oxferd Comma” was predicated on the idea that Trump, “the newly elected president, was acting as a Russian asset when he fired James Comey on May 9, 2017,” the administration official said. The case was marked as a “‘sensitive investigative matter,’ which was generally to keep it off the books from other agents to be able to see.”

The case was opened despite the fact that “almost everything in the FBI’s possession at that point had debunked or ruled out that Trump or his campaign was colluding with Russia at that time,” the official continued.

The FBI launched the investigation on May 16, 2017, one day before Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate the Russia collusion as though it were legitimate, despite the fact that the Clinton campaign-funded Steele dossier had already been debunked. Oxferd Comma was then absorbed into the Mueller investigation.

Well prior to May 2017, according to the admin official, FBI Special Agent William Barnett (who worked with Russia hoaxer and disgraced former Special Agent Peter Strzok on Crossfire Hurricane) gave a “lengthy interview” where he said the FBI concluded that there was no evidence of Russia collusion with Trump, or his former advisers Michael Flynn, Carter Page, and George Papadopoulos.

“The FBI is opening a full investigation based on the articulable factual basis that reasonably indicates that President Donald J. Trump may be or has been, wittingly or unwittingly, involved in activities for or on behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation which may constitute violations of federal criminal law or threats to the national security of the United States,” a May 16, 2017, document released by the White House on Wednesday shows. “The goal of the investigation is to determine if President Trump is or was directed, controlled by, and/or coordinated activities with, the Russian Federation in a manner constituting a threat to the national security of the United States and/or a violation of federal criminal statutes. In addition, this investigation will also seek to determine whether President Trump or others yet to be named obstructed and/or conspired to obstruct any associated FBI investigation.”

Continue reading.

FBI Follies: Bureau secretly probed Trump as a Russian asset for firing Comey: declassified memos

Documents declassified by the White House Government Transparency Task Force show the investigation – codenamed “Oxferd Comma” – was launched in the immediate aftermath of Comey’s May 9, 2017 firing and was predicated on allegations that the bureau’s own agents had mostly dismissed by that time.

By John Solomon, Just The News, August 5, 2026:

The FBI opened a criminal probe specifically targeting Donald Trump in May 2017, alleging the newly elected president may have been acting as a Russian asset when he fired then-Director James Comey even though the bureau’s own evidence overwhelmingly showed at the time there was no collusion with the Kremlin.

Internal memos newly declassified by the White House show the investigation – codenamed “Oxferd Comma” – was launched in the immediate aftermath of Comey’s May 9, 2017, firing and was predicated on an allegation that previously released memos show the bureau’s own agents had mostly dismissed.

“The FBI is opening a full investigation based on an articulable factual basis that reasonably indicates that President Donald J. Trump may be or has been, wittingly or unwittingly, involved in activities for or on behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation which may constitute violations of federal criminal law or threats to the national security of the United States,” the electronic communication opening the probe on May 16, 2017, stated.

Goal of the investigation was to determine if Trump was directed by or controlled by the Russian Federation

“The goal of the investigation is to determine if President Trump is or was directed by, controlled by, and/or coordinated activities with, the Russian Federation in a manner constituting a threat to the national security of the United States and/or a violation of federal criminal statutes,” it added. “In addition, this investigation will also seek to determine whether President Trump and others yet to be named obstructed and/or conspiracy to obstruct any associated FBI investigation.”

File: OXFERD COMMA – Opening EC – redacted and declassified by FBI 7.30.26 (2).pdf

The memo, written by the FBI’s counterintelligence division and approved by then-FBI General Counsel James Baker and then-Assistant Director for Counterintelligence William Priestap, made clear the concerns about Russian influence and obstruction included Comey’s firing, in part because of the public explanations Trump gave for the termination.

“This alternative explanation can be reasonably read to imply that the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation was a factor in President Trump’s decision to terminate Comey,” the memo stated.

Both the Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were advised that the probe had been launched, the memos show.

File: OXFERD COMMA – FBI Informs DOJ – redacted and declassified by FBI 7.30.26.pdf

The FBI marked the investigation as a “sensitive investigative matter” and declared it was “the least intrusive method to address the serious national security risk posed by the activities alleged.”

But that decision proved anything but nonintrusive: it prompted the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller by Rosenstein and a nearly two-year probe that hampered the start of the Trump presidency even though Mueller’s team, like the FBI before it, was unable to substantiate any collusion between Russia and Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election.

File: MuellerReportFinal.pdf

A subsequent investigation by Special Counsel John Durham – released by the Biden Justice Department in 2023 – concluded there was no basis for the FBI to even open the original Crossfire Hurricane investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion.

The newly declassified Oxferd Comma memos show the case was closed on April 9, 2019, a few weeks after Mueller’s probe was sunset with a final report and no charges against Trump.

“The Special Counsel provided the Attorney General with a confidential report explaining his prosecution and declination decisions,” the closing memo noted.

The memos are being released as federal prosecutors in Fort Pierce, Fla., reportedly investigate whether the FBI, DOJ and intelligence agencies engaged in an ongoing conspiracy to violate the civil rights of Trump and his supporters through repeated criminal investigations that lacked evidence of wrongdoing.

It was well known that the FBI wanted to investigate Comey’s firing by Trump as an act of obstruction and that such concerns led to Mueller’s special counsel appointment.

Records would later show Comey was fired on the merits because the DOJ believed he mishandled the Hillary Clinton email investigation, and the department’s own independent inspector general would later conclude that Comey “violated long-standing department practice and protocol” with his conduct in the Clinton case.

The new FBI memos, identified and declassified by the White House Government Transparency Task Force, reveal for the first time that the FBI predicated the obstruction case against Trump – and gave it a codename — on the concern the then-president may have been an asset of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

But previously released FBI and DOJ records show the notion of Trump being a Russian asset had already been widely dismissed by agents and analysts working for months beforehand on the Crossfire Hurricane case that examined Russia-Trump collusion.

In fact, the lead agent in the Crossfire Hurricane case texted his colleague the same week that Oxferd Comma was opened suggesting he did not believe the allegations were substantiated.

“I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there,” then-Deputy Assistant Director Pete Strzok wrote FBI special counsel Lisa Page on May 19, 2017.

Strzok’s text sentiments were confirmed by another key colleague working on the case, Special Agent William Barnett, who would later tell the Justice Department that by early 2017 the FBI had mostly ruled out that the Trump campaign and its various players like retired Gen. Mike Flynn or advisers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos had colluded with the Kremlin, according to an FBI interview report of Barnett released in 2020.

“BARNETT still did not see any evidence of collusion between the TRUMP Campaign and the Russian Government,” the summary of the agent’s interview revealed.

By the time the FBI tried to portray Trump as under Putin’s grip to justify the opening of the Oxferd Comma investigation, it had also learned that the original allegations of collusion came from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and were funneled to the FBI in a dossier written by a former British spy named Christopher Steele, who was paid by the Clinton campaign’s law firm, and that the Steele dossier’s contents had mostly been uncorroborated or debunked and were part of a political dirty trick.

The first warning signs of those concerns actually emerged in late summer 2016 when CIA Director John Brennan personally briefed then-President Barack Obama and the FBI that U.S. intelligence had intercepted Clinton’s plan on or about July 26, 2016, to manufacture a scandal alleging Trump was conspiring with Russia to hijack the 2016 election.

“We’re getting additional insight into Russian activities from [REDACTED],” Brennan notes of his conversation with Obama stated. “CITE [summarizing] alleged approved by Hillary Clinton a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”

The intelligence made clear Clinton’s plan was to “smear” Trump, and it was shared directly with the FBI, including Comey at an Aug. 3, 2016 briefing, according to a classified annex to a DOJ report made public last year. That briefing occurred just four days after the Crossfire Hurricane probe was launched into alleged Russia collusion.

“On August 3, 2016, during a meeting at the White House, CIA Director Brennan briefed President Obama, Vice President Biden, DNI Clapper, FBI Director Comey, and other U.S. officials regarding Russian interference efforts as well as the T1 intelligence received concerning the referenced plan by the Clinton campaign,” the annex noted.

Continue reading

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Signing Your Own Death Warrant?

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Put yourself in the buckled shoes of the founding fathers centuries ago, picking up a quill pen, and then signing your name on a document, the Declaration of Independence. This could have been signing your own death warrant.

Last month we celebrated the 250th anniversary of the acceptance of the Declaration (by voice vote) on July 4, 1776. This month, we celebrate the signing of same by the delegates who were able to return to Philadelphia in early August 1776.

Only two names were attached to the July 4, 1776-first copy of the document—that of John Hancock, the president of the Second Continental Congress, which produced and approved the Declaration. Also named was Charles Thomson, the Secretary for the Congress. (He later went on to become a distinguished Bible scholar.)

The whole proceeding was very dangerous. It would make them special targets of the British. Nonetheless, the founding fathers were determined to complete the task by affixing their names to the Declaration.

On August 1, the day before the signing, Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, gave a speech. Adams was a prime mover in the whole process. Thomas Jefferson called him “the patriarch of liberty.” Adams biographer Benjamin H. Irvin points out that the Declaration of Independence was essentially the culmination of Samuel Adams’ life work. Adams had recruited many to the patriot cause, including John Hancock and John Adams, a second cousin of Samuel.

I have written before about Samuel Adams, the largely forgotten founding father, whom biographer Stacy Schiff calls, “the most essential founding father.” Samuel Adams was the lightning rod of the American Revolution.

In his speech the day before the courageous signing of the document, Samuel Adams declared, “We have this day restored the Sovereign, to whom alone men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven…and from the rising to the setting sun, may His Kingdom come.”

Samuel Adams was known as “the last of the Puritans,” and I think we can add that he was “the first of the founding fathers.” Like so many Americans at the time, he was very concerned that all the sacrifices of his Puritan (and Pilgrim) forebears would all be wasted if England were to completely take over America and force the Church of England on the colonies. Thus, the right of conscience was at stake.

To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Dr. Paul Jehle, President of the Plymouth Rock Foundation, and Dr. Mark Beliles, co-founder of Providence Foundation (Charlottesville, VA), organized a special webcast to highlight the Declaration and the signing. (Beliles and I have written a new book on Jefferson and how God is the source of our rights.)

As executive director of Providence Forum (of Coral Ridge Ministries), I was privileged to be a part of this event, even speaking briefly. I sat next to Jehle in his church at Plymouth, along with the sheriff of “America’s Home Town” (which Plymouth is known as).

The website for the event, 250declaration.com, states: “Special online Event, Nationwide…On August 2nd two hundred and fifty years ago, America’s Founders signed the famous Declaration of Independence.”

250declaration adds: “Today America needs a new commitment from its citizens and those from other nations who desire the same quality of liberty. Affirm our Nation’s Birth Certificate. Some of America’s top Christian historians and speakers will participate from various locations to give remarks and lead people to digitally ‘sign’ the document. Just as the original Declaration ended with a pledge, we ask you to consider affixing your name and the region from where you live online…You would be affirming the Declaration’s core ideas of God-given rights, the rule of law, consent of the governed, equality, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, as well as the right to lawfully resist tyranny.”

And so in Paul Jehle’s New Testament Church in Plymouth, Massachusetts, visitors were encouraged to sign copies of the Declaration of Independence in order to reaffirm our commitment to the founding principles contained therein. Plus, people in other locations, including online, were also signing copies.

What gave those founding fathers 250 years ago the courage to take such a bold act, as potentially signing their own death warrants?

The last sentence of the Declaration gives us the answer, “And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

We have been given a great gift of liberty in this nation. Only through faith in the God of our fathers can it be maintained. As Thomas Jefferson, chief author of the Declaration, once asseverated, “God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?”

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Nick Shirley BREAKS SILENCE after being chased by a man with a knife

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Conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley alleges that he has been threatened while reporting on the recent influx of migrants into the Spanish territory of Ceuta.

Last week saw tens of thousands cross from Morocco to Ceuta, in what the leaders of both the enclave and Spain have described as a “violation” of “territorial integrity.” On Monday, Spanish officials said that around 69,500 migrants who initially crossed over had returned to Morocco, leaving an estimated 2,500 still in Ceuta—a town of around 84,000.

Shirley, who gained prominence for videos documenting alleged fraud in Minnesota, traveled to the town where he has been interviewing locals and migrants. The main, 29-minute video of this trip has amassed over eight million views on X and more than 900,000 on YouTube as of Tuesday morning. In one clip, Shirley appears to be pursued by several individuals, including a man he said was carrying a knife, before Spanish police escorted him and his crew back to their vehicle.

Shirley said the man—whom he identified as a Moroccan migrant—had threatened to stab both him and his colleague. The conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley alleges that he has been threatened while reporting on the recent influx of migrants into the Spanish territory of Ceuta.

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