Authored by Michael Washburn via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The dramatic rise in median home prices in New York City and other busy real estate markets from pre-pandemic levels, and the intense competition for desirable properties, has driven buyers throughout the country to pursue a range of innovative solutions they might never have considered four or five years ago, brokers and real estate lawyers have told The Epoch Times.

With the median home listing price in New York City at $825,000, and a median sale price of $776,100, according to realtor.com figures, the Big Apple stands out as one of the most expensive and competitive markets in the nation.

By comparison, the median price stood at $615,000 in January 2019.

But that does not mean that buyers elsewhere have it easy. Throughout the rest of the country, they are looking long and hard for affordable deals with average home prices poised at $412,300.

The pandemic was something of a turning point. In the period from the first quarter of 2020 to the end of 2024, for example, the average price rose nearly 50 percent, from $329,000 to $479,500, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Mark Scheier, cofounder of Acton, Massachusetts-based real estate law firm Scheier Katin & Epstein, said recent analyses that describe the current market as a buyer’s market—where inventory volume and a relatively low bar for access favor buyers over sellers—are mistaken.

“I’m not experiencing a buyer’s market at all, I’m still experiencing a seller’s market here,” he told The Epoch Times.

Until recently, about 10 percent of the deals Scheier brokered for clients were all-cash deals, while the rest involved some mixture of financing—typically, bank loans—and cash.

“Almost 40 percent of my deals are cash deals, which was never the case before. People are doing everything they can, breaking into their retirement money, pooling all their assets together, to try to make cash deals,” Scheier said.

With prices rising so rapidly, one factor is fear of missing out (FOMO)—an acute sense on the part of many buyers that if they don’t get in now, they will face an even more fiercely competitive market in the near future, he stated.

A corollary to this perception, he said, is the need to acquire properties whose value is increasing dramatically and take advantage of the price appreciation while they still can.

“I’ve been practicing for 51 years, and I’ve seen all the ups and downs, and right now, I think there’s a lot of FOMO going on,” said Scheier.

“The train is leaving without them and if they don’t rush to get on the train, they’re going to lose out on that appreciation. People are feeling that way, so they’re moving ahead, they’re jumping off the cliff.”

Many people in the market are coming to realize that mortgage rates are unlikely to fall back to 2.5 percent in the foreseeable future and that they will have to accept rates of 6.5–7.0 percent, which might have previously put them off trying to close a deal, Scheier noted.

But the historically high prices and the competition requires a diversification of strategy that brokers say they have rarely seen before.

Tough Times

Some real estate industry professionals hailed the $418 million settlement in March of a long-running lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors (NAR), Sitzer/Burnett v. NAR Commission.

The lawsuit took issue with agents’ use of the association’s Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and the practice of charging 6 percent commissions, often split evenly between sellers’ and buyers’ brokers, in property sales.

Michael Downer, a broker at Coldwell Banker Realty in Naples, Florida, said the settlement means that buyers’ brokers can no longer pretend to their clients that they are acting pro bono while in fact automatically getting half of the 6 percent commission paid to sellers’ brokers at closing.

Buy-side brokers will have to be more transparent about what they are actually doing and what compensation they should rightfully receive for their role in a deal.

At the same time, others criticized the outcome on the grounds that purchasers who cease finding a buy-side broker using the MLS will begin working directly with sellers’ brokers, which poses a conflict of interest given those brokers’ preexisting relationships with their own clients.

“From a legal perspective, I don’t know that there has been that significant of a change in laws. Obviously, there was the recent NAR settlement, but it’s just with respect to the use of the MLS,” Zachary Schorr, a real estate lawyer and partner of the Los Angeles-based firm Schorr Law, told The Epoch Times.

In this highly competitive environment, some buyers are even going so far as waive the loan and appraisal contingencies that many have relied upon in the past to guarantee that they can get their deposit back if the mortgage financing they seek doesn’t get approved, or if the appraisal turned up unexpected issues at the property, said Schorr.

It can be a big mistake to waive these things or skirt due diligence—which may lead to serious problems after a sale, and cases of buyer’s remorse. Yet some people these days are acutely conscious of the disadvantage they face with respect to other buyers who are able to present themselves to sellers as unencumbered by any need to secure financing.

“It’s a more strategic way to do it if you’re in the all-cash market, or you’ll be beaten out by all-cash,” said Schorr.

“This is a higher-end market, too. If you’re way above the median price, there are more all-cash buyers.”

Lara Mizrack, a broker at Brown Harris Stevens in New York City, described many buyers’ unease as largely a function of high interest rates, the upcoming election, and international uncertainty. Mizrack acknowledged the distinct advantage that cash buyers hold in the current market.

“An all-cash deal has a faster application process, easier closing, and a seller does not have concerns about bank rejections,” she said.

Creative Approaches

The key for buyers in the current market who are not super-wealthy is to show a high degree of flexibility both with regard to the types of properties they set out to acquire no less than the terms and structures of financing, said Cara Ameer, a broker with Coldwell Banker Vanguard Realty in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.

Finding prices in the range they can afford may sometimes require buyers to look beyond the area where they live and to consider, say, a townhouse or condo unit rather than a single-family home, Ameer told The Epoch Times.

Another option is to buy a property in order to rent it out and use the revenue from the rental to pay off the mortgage and increase their share in the equity of the property in question, she said.

“There are affordable opportunities in virtually every city and state, you just have to know where to look. Smaller towns near colleges and universities are often promising opportunities,” Ameer stated.

“Buyers should also work with a lender well versed in low- to no-downpayment loans, as well as first-time homebuyer programs and creative lending options that can help them access financing.”

Ameer noted that one Southern California lender she works with makes use of a program where buyers do not need to put any money down on a first mortgage and can take out a second mortgage using 3.5 percent in gift funds directly from the lender. The buyer must have funds to cover the closing costs.

The total paid at closing runs to around 3–4 percent of the purchase price, she said. Buyers who do not have the means even to cover that expense at closing can request a cost credit from the seller.

Ameer also pointed to Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loan programs that require 3.5 percent down, and conventional loan programs with low down payments that cover anywhere from 5 percent to 100 percent of the total purchase price.

Yet another option for buyers who do not have deep pockets is to seek out a property in a state of disrepair, whether that means something as serious as a missing roof or as cosmetic as broken air conditioning, and to apply for a renovation loan, Ameer said.

Read more here…

It’s one of the “biggest data breaches ever” and you might be exposed as a result. 

Background check company Jerico Pictures Inc., which does business under the name National Public Data was breached back hackers earlier this year, a new lawsuit alleges. 

The suit says that as a result, 2.9 billion people have had confidential data exposed and stolen, according to a new report from Mashable.

The worst part is that those impacted by this cyberattack may be unaware of their involvement since National Public Data allegedly collects data from non-public sources without consent.

The breach has exposed information on nearly 3 billion people, including full names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and personal details of both living and deceased relatives.

The Mashable report says that this previously unknown breach’s timing remains unclear.

Plaintiff Christopher Hofmann learned of it in July when an identity theft protection service alerted him that his data had been leaked on the dark web. The hackers posted the “National Public Data” database on a dark web forum in April, seeking $3.5 million from a buyer.

Last month, Mashable also reported on RockYou2024, a massive leak of nearly 10 billion users’ credentials, though it was an updated compilation of older breaches.

With billions of records exposed, the National Public Data breach could be one of the largest ever, comparable to Yahoo’s 2013 breach affecting 3 billion accounts.

Great news if you’re AT&T’s PR department though, we guess…

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

We have previously discussed controversial sentences handed down in cases involving rioters on January 6th, including sentencing orders that, in my view, violate First Amendment rights. That included the case of Daniel Goodwyn, who pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building. That crime would ordinarily not involve any jail time for a first offender.

However, Judge Reggie B. Walton  of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia decided that he would use the case to regulate what Goodwyn was reading and communicating with a chilling probation order. After the case was sent back by the D.C. Circuit, Walton doubled down on his extraordinary order. Now the D.C. Circuit has refused to hear an emergency appeal.

Judge Walton has attracted controversy and criticism over his public comments about former President Donald Trump and the other issues. He caused a stir in Washington after doing an interview with CNN in which he rebuked former President Donald Trump for his criticism of judges and their family members. Walton previously called Trump a “charlatan,”  and said that “I don’t think he cares about democracy, only power.”

Critics charged that Walton’s public statements ran afoul of Canon 3A(6) of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, which states:

“A judge should not make public comment on the merits of a matter pending or impending in any court.”

Walton then triggered criticism over his handling of the Goodwin case.

The case involved Daniel Goodwyn, 35, of Corinth, Texas, who pleaded guilty on Jan. 31, 2023, to one misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority. That is a relatively minor offense, but Walton imposed a 60-day jail sentence in June 2023 with these ongoing conditions on his online reading and speech.

Walton reportedly noted that Goodwyn spread “disinformation” during a broadcast of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on March 14, 2023 and ordered that Mr. Goodwyn’s computer be subject to “monitoring and inspection” by a probation agent to check if he spread Jan. 6 disinformation during the term of his supervised release.

After accepting the plea to a single misdemeanor, Walton expressed scorn for Goodwyn appearing “gleeful” on Jan. 6 and his “egging on” other rioters.

He asked his defense counsel “why I should feel that he doesn’t pose a risk to our democracy?”

As a condition for supervised release, DOJ pushed the monitoring conditions and found a judge who seemed eager to impose it.

The order reflects the utter impunity shown by the Justice Department in its pursuit of January 6th defendants.  Justice Department official Michael Sherwin  proudly declared in a television interview that “our office wanted to ensure that there was shock and awe … it worked because we saw through media posts that people were afraid to come back to D.C. because they’re, like, ‘If we go there, we’re gonna get charged.’ … We wanted to take out those individuals that essentially were thumbing their noses at the public for what they did.”

Sherwin was celebrated for his pledge to use such draconian means to send a message to others in the country. (Sherwin has left the Justice Department and is now a partner at Kobre & Kim).

Walton was rebuked by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for a surveillance order of Goodwin to detect any spreading of “disinformation” or “misinformation.”

In my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discussed concerns over the cases like Goodwyn’s and their implications for free speech. I participated in the coverage on January 6th and criticized President Trump’s speech while he was giving it. I disagreed with the legal claims made to oppose certification. However, the “shock and awe” campaign of the Justice Department, in my view, has trampled on free speech rights in cases that range from Goodwyn to the prosecutions of Trump himself.

Many of us were relieved when appellate judges (Gregory Katsas, Neomi Rao, and Bradley Garcia) rebuked Walton and held that “[t]he district court plainly erred in imposing the computer-monitoring condition without considering whether it was ‘reasonably related’ to the relevant sentencing factors and involved ‘no greater deprivation of liberty than is reasonably necessary’ to achieve the purposes behind the sentencing.”

They sent the case back but, to the surprise of few, Judge Walton proceeded to double down on the monitoring while implausibly declaring “I don’t want to chill anyone’s First Amendment rights.”

For some reason, Walton believes that barring an individual from reviewing and engaging in political speech does not “chill” his First Amendment rights.

Most of us were appalled by the riot and the underlying views of figures like Goodwyn, who is a self-proclaimed member of the Proud Boys. He was rightfully arrested and should be punished for his conduct. The question is not the legitimacy of punishment, but the scope of that punishment.

Prosecutor Brian Brady detailed how the Justice Department has in place a new system using artificial intelligence to monitor the reading and statements of citizens like Goodwyn. The Justice Department brushed aside the free speech concerns since Goodwyn remains under court supervision, even though he pleaded guilty to only a single misdemeanor.

Brady described a virtual AI driven thought program. The justification was that Goodwyn refused to abandon his extreme political views:

“Throughout the pendency of Goodwyn’s case, he has made untruthful statements regarding his conduct and the events of the day, he has used websites and social media to place targets on police officers who defended the Capitol, and he has used these platforms to publish and view extremist media. Imposing the requested [monitoring] conditions would protect the public from further dissemination of misinformation… [and] provide specific deterrence from him committing similar crimes.”

So now federal courts can use a single misdemeanor for unlawful entry in a federal building for less than 40 seconds to “protect the public from … dissemination of misinformation” on the government.

That was all Walton needed to hear. Relying on a record supplied by the Justice Department, Walton said in the hearing that Goodwyn is still engaging “in the same type of rhetoric” that fomented the Jan. 6 violence. He added that he was concerned about Goodwyn spreading “false narratives” when we are “on the heels of another election.”

Walton merely added the DOJ record to his renewed sentencing conditions.

Defense counsel then returned to the D.C. Circuit to seek an emergency stay but Judges Florence Pan and Bradley Garcia denied the motion, holding that “Appellant has not satisfied the stringent requirements for a stay pending appeal” to prevent further “false narratives.”

That drew a pointed dissent from Judge Gregory Katsas who stated:

Daniel Goodwyn pleaded guilty to one count of knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(1). Goodwyn entered the Capitol and remained inside for a total of 36 seconds. He did not use force to enter, did not assault police officers, and neither took nor damaged any government property. When police instructed Goodwyn to leave the building, he did so.

…

On appeal, this Court vacated the condition … We further instructed the district court, if it wished to impose a new computer- monitoring condition on remand, to “explain its reasoning,” to “develop the record in support of its decision,” and to ensure that the condition complies with section 3583(d) and with the Constitution.

The district court reimposed the same condition on remand. In an oral hearing, the court said that Goodwyn had made statements on social media that “can be, it seems to me, construed as” urging a repeat of January 6, particularly “on the heels of another election.”  In its written order, the court elaborated on what it called Goodwyn’s “concerning online activity.”  This included posting exhortations to “#StopTheSteal!” and “#FightForTrump,” soliciting donations to fund his travel to Washington, posing for a livestream while inside the Capitol, confirming his presence there by text, and tweeting opinions such as: “They WANT a revolution. They’re proving our point. They don’t represent us. They hate us.” Id. at 3–4. In addressing what the court described as Goodwyn pushing “false narratives” about January 6 after-the-fact, the court, quoting from the government’s brief, led with the fact Goodwyn “sat for an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News Channel.” Id. at 4. Finally, in concluding that computer monitoring was reasonably related to Goodwyn’s offense, the court reasoned that monitoring would prevent Goodwyn from raising funds to support potential future crimes and would separate him “from extremist media, rehabilitating him.”

Judge Katsas stated that Goodwyn was likely to prevail on the merits and that his colleagues allowed the denial of First Amendment rights to continue in the interim.

The Walton order reflects the erosion of support for the First Amendment, even on our courts. It is reminiscent of our previous discussion of how courts have criminalized “toxic ideologies” as part of the crackdown on free speech in the United Kingdom.

Here is the D.C. Circuit order: United States v. Goodwyn

A McMansion in Harford County, Maryland, exploded on Sunday morning, resulting in one fatality at the 2300 block of Arthur Woods Drive in Bel Air.

Harford County Fire and EMS Association spokesman Jeffrey Sexton told WBAL TV that emergency dispatchers received a call early this morning reporting a natural gas leak at the house. Shortly after, their hotlines were flooded with reports of an explosion.

Neighborhood doorbell camera captured the sound of a house exploding in the 2300 block of Arthur Woods Drive in Bel Air on Sunday morning.

You can find all the details on our website https://t.co/0ufS0dHAon pic.twitter.com/0nOyJs0xBp

— WMAR-2 News (@WMAR2News) August 11, 2024

Local utility company Baltimore Gas and Electric was aware of the NatGas leak, and contractors were on-site at the time of the explosion that obliterated the house and damaged surrounding structures in the neighborhood.

One of our viewers, Sam Casale, sent us this drone video captured minutes after a home on Arthur Woods Drive in Bel Air reportedly exploded killing at least one person. You can see the home is reduced to rubble. Firefighters are still searching the debris. @wbaltv11 pic.twitter.com/5LkFFfBrfj

— Breana Ross (@breanarossWBAL) August 11, 2024

“This is one of the largest explosions I’ve seen, especially in Harford County,” Master Deputy State Fire Marshal Oliver Alkire told WBAL.

Update on apparent house explosion. Volunteer Firefighters continue to search for victims. No current public threat. @HarfordCoDES Special Operations is responding with special equipment to search the rubble.

Media staging is Abingdon Library 2510 South Tollgate Road, Abingdon. https://t.co/B7srld2j6N pic.twitter.com/H6g08Iwjwb

— Harford Co., MD Fire & EMS (@HarforCoFireEMS) August 11, 2024

House explosion in Bel Air pic.twitter.com/O1MyjY8hMY

— Megan Weeks (@sparkyweeks25) August 11, 2024

Emergency officials said one of the workers and a neighbor were injured. The deceased victim’s identity has not been released.

The home was for sale at the time. Investigators are still trying to determine whether the homeowner was inside during the incident.

Alkire added that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is en route to the scene.

Authored by Ray McGovern via Consortium News,

Russiagate continues to survive like a science fiction monster resilient to bullets.   

The latest effort at rehabilitating it is an interview by Adam Rawnsley in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine of one Michael van Landingham, an intelligence analyst who is proud of having written the first draft of the cornerstone “analysis” of Russiagate, the so-called Intelligence Community Assessment.

The ICA blamed the Russians for helping Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016.  It was released two weeks before Trump assumed office. The thoroughly politicized assessment was an embarrassment to the profession of intelligence.

Worse, it was consequential in emasculating Trump to prevent him from working for a more decent relationship with Russia.

In July 2018, Ambassador Jack Matlock (the last U.S. envoy to the Soviet Union), was moved to write his own stinging assessment of the “Assessment” under the title: “Former US Envoy to Moscow Calls Intelligence Report on Alleged Russian Interference ‘Politically Motivated.’” 

In January 2019, I wrote the following about the ICA: 

“A glance at the title of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) (which was not endorsed by the whole community) — ‘Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections’ — would suffice to show that the widely respected and independently-minded State Department intelligence bureau should have been included. State intelligence had demurred on several points made in the Oct. 2002 Estimate on Iraq, and even insisted on including a footnote of dissent.

James Clapper, then director of national intelligence who put together the ICA, knew that all too well. So he evidently thought it would be better not to involve troublesome dissenters, or even inform them what was afoot.

Similarly, the Defense Intelligence Agency should have been included, particularly since it has considerable expertise on the G.R.U., the Russian military intelligence agency, which has been blamed for Russian hacking of the DNC emails.

But DIA, too, has an independent streak and, in fact, is capable of reaching judgments Clapper would reject as anathema. …

With help from the Times and other mainstream media, Clapper, mostly by his silence, was able to foster the charade that the ICA was actually a bonafide product of the entire intelligence community for as long as he could get away with it. After four months it came time to fess up that the ICA had not been prepared, as Secretary Clinton and the media kept claiming, by ‘all 17 intelligence agencies.’

In fact, Clapper went one better, proudly asserting — with striking naiveté — that the ICA writers were ‘handpicked analysts’ from only the F.B.I., C.I.A., and NSA. He may have thought that this would enhance the ICA’s credibility. It is a no-brainer, however, that when you want handpicked answers, you better handpick the analysts. And so he did.”

[See: The January 2017 ‘Assessment’ on Russiagate] 

Buried in Annex B of the ICA is this curious disclaimer:

“Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents. … High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong.”

Small wonder, then, that a New York Times report on the day the ICA was released noted:

“What is missing from the public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. That is a significant omission…”

Burying Obama’s Role

Mainstream journalism has successfully buried parts of the Russiagate story, including the role played by former President Barack Obama.

Was Obama aware of the “Russian hack” chicanery? There’s ample evidence he was “all in.” More than a month before the 2016 election, while the F.B.I. was still waiting for the findings of cyber-firm CrowdStrike, which the Democratic Party had hired in place of the F.B.I. to find out who had breached their servers, Obama told Clapper and Dept. of Homeland Security head Jeh Johnson not to wait.

So with the election looming, the two dutifully published a Joint Statement on Oct. 7, 2016:

“The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. … “

Obama’s role was revealed in 2022 when the F.B.I. was forced to make public F.B.I. emails in connection with the trial of fellow Russiagate plotter, Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann

Clapper and the C.I.A., F.B.I., and NSA directors briefed Obama on the ICA on Jan. 5, 2017. That was the day before they gave it personally to President-elect Donald Trump, telling him it showed the Russians helped him win, and that it had just been made public.

On Jan. 18, 2017, at his final press conference, Obama used lawyerly language in an awkward attempt to cover his derriere:

“The conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked.”

So we ended up with “inconclusive conclusions” on that admittedly crucial point… and, for good measure, use of both words — “hacking” and “leaked.” 

The tale that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee in 2016 was then disproved on Dec. 5, 2017 by the head of CrowdStrike’s sworn testimony to Congress. Shawn Henry told the House Intelligence committee behind closed doors that CrowdStrike found no evidence that anyone had successfully hacked the DNC servers. 

But it is still widely believed because The New York Times and other Democrat-allied corporate media never reported on that testimony when it was finally made public on May 7, 2020.

Enter Michael van Landingham

Rolling Stone’s article on July 28 about van Landingham says he is still proud of his role as one of the “hand-picked analysts” in drafting the discredited ICA.

The piece is entitled: “He Confirmed Russia Meddled in 2016 to Help Trump. Now, He’s Speaking Out.” It says: “Trump viewed the 2017 intel report as his ‘Achilles heel.’ The analyst who wrote it opens up about Trump, Russia and what really happened in 2016.” 

Without ever mentioning that the conclusions of the ICA were proven false, by Henry’s testimony and the conclusions of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that found no evidence of Trump-Russia “collusion,” Rolling Stone says:

“The 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), dubbed ‘Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections,’ was one of the most consequential documents in modern American history. It helped trigger investigations by the House and Senate intelligence committees and a special counsel investigation, and it fueled an eight-year-long grudge that Trump has nursed against the intelligence community.” 

Rawnsley writes in Rolling Stone the following as gospel truth, without providing any evidence to back it up. 

“When WikiLeaks published a tranche of [John] Podesta’s emails in late October, the link between the Russian hackers and the releases became undeniable. The dump contained the original spear phishing message that Russian hackers had used to trick Podesta into coughing up his password. News outlets quickly seized on the email, crediting it for what it was: proof that the Russians were behind the campaign.”

Because Rawnsley didn’t tell us, it’s not clear how this “spear phishing message” provides “undeniable” proof that Russia was behind it. Consortium News has contacted Rawnsley to provide more detail to back up his assertion. 

Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and close friend of Julian Assange,  suggested to Scott Horton on Horton’s radio show in 2016 that the DNC leak and the Podesta leak came from two different sources, neither of them the Russian government.

“The Podesta emails and the DNC emails are, of course, two separate things and we shouldn’t conclude that they both have the same source,” Murray said. “In both cases we’re talking of a leak, not a hack, in that the person who was responsible for getting that information out had legal access to that information.”

Reading between the lines of the interview, one could interpret Murray’s comments as suggesting that the DNC leak came from a Democratic source and that the Podesta leak came from someone inside the U.S. intelligence community, which may have been monitoring John Podesta’s emails because the Podesta Group, which he founded with his brother Tony, served as a registered “foreign agent” for Saudi Arabia.

“John Podesta was a paid lobbyist for the Saudi government,” Murray noted. “If the American security services were not watching the communications of the Saudi government’s paid lobbyist in Washington, then the American security services would not be doing their job. … His communications are going to be of interest to a great number of other security services as well.”

Leak by Americans

Horton then asked, “Is it fair to say that you’re saying that the Podesta leak came from inside the intelligence services, NSA [the electronic spying National Security Agency] or another agency?”

“I think what I said was certainly compatible with that kind of interpretation, yeah,” Murray responded. “In both cases they are leaks by Americans.”

William Binney, a former U.S. National Security Agency technical director, told Consortium News this regarding Rolling Stone‘s assertion about the Podesta emails:

“Saying something does not make it so. There is no evidence the phishers or hackers were Russian. In today’s networks, you really have to have the underlying internet protocol (IP nr) or device medium access control (MAC nr) to show the routing to/from [sending and receiving] devices to show exfiltration plus trace route evidence to show if that data went any further.

[In other words, you would need the unique computer addresses of the hacked and the hacker and anyone they may have relayed it to, if it were a hack.]

[Rawnsley] gives none of this type of data.  So, until he provides this type of data, I view his statements as an opinion and not worth much at all. 

The whole world-wide network has to have these numbers to get data from point A to point B in the world. No one (NSA included) has shown this data going to Wikileaks for publication. The 5EYES have Wikileaks under cast iron cover/analysis and would know this and report it.”

“There is one more aspect that’s important to take into account,” Binney added. “It’s the network log. This contains a record of every instruction sent on the network along with addresses for the sender and receiver. It’s held for a period of time according to storage allocated to it.”

Binney said:

“So, if there’s a hack, then the instruction to achieve the hack is in the log. Remember, Crowd Strike did the analysis of the DNC server all through this time and never talked about the network log. Now, Podesta’s computer does not have a network log, but the DNC and worldwide network providers do.”

Binney told CN that he proposed automated analysis of the worldwide log for the NSA in 1992, “but they refused it as it would expose all the money and program corruption in NSA contracts.”

Binney said he was putting that function into the ThinThread program in 1999/2000 that he was developing for the NSA, but the agency “removed it in 2001 after 9/11.”

A report by the private cybersecurity firm SecureWorks in June 2016 assessed with “moderate confidence” that a group identified as APT28, nicknamed “Fancy Bear” among other names “operating from the Russian Federation … gathering intelligence on behalf of the Russian government” was behind the Podesta phishing, though as Binney points out, the NSA found no such evidence, when it would have had to, had Russia done it.   

The name “Fancy Bear” of the alleged hackers from GRU, the Russian defense intelligence agency, incidentally, was coined by Dmitri Alperovich, the anti-Putin Russian co-founder of CrowdStrike. 

“This whole Russiagate affair was a concoction of the DNC, the Clintons, the F.B.I. etc. and none of them have produced any specific basic evidence to support their assertions,” Binney said. “The idea that the word ‘Bear’ implies Russia is about the level of technical intellect we are dealing with here.”  

Binney said these are the key technical questions that still need to be answered: 

1. What are the IP and/or MAC numbers involved? And, what are the allocations of these numbers by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (network number allocation authority)?

2. What are the trace routes of the hacked packets going across the worldwide network?

3. What instructions are in the network log indicating data exfiltration of data?

4. Are there any other specific technical aspects that are relevant to a potential hack? No opinions or guesses, that’s not factual evidence of anything beyond the writers biases.”

Binney said in email:

“Even if you assume the Russians did the hack and have the DNC/Podesta emails, you still have to show the transfer of these emails to Wikileaks to know who really did the deed. So far, no one has evidence the emails were sent to Wikileaks.

Most importantly, Julian Assange publicly said it was not the Russians. Kimdotcom said he helped others (not the Russians) to get data to Wikileaks. Craig Murray talked about physical transfer of data. These statements by people involved in WikiLeaks is clearly consistent with the technical evidence I and others have assembled.”

Binny said that “until such time as those others produce specific technical evidence for peer review and validation (like we have), they are just pushing sludge up an inclined plane with a narrow squeegee hoping they can get it over the top and accepted by all.”

Binney noted that the ancient Greek school of sophism called this the fallacy of repetition. “That’s where they keep repeating a falsehood over and over again till it is believed (it helps when they say the same thing from many different directions especially by people in positions of authority),” Binney said.

So the head of CrowdStrike testifies that there’s no evidence anyone hacked the DNC and according to Binney and Murray, there is no definitive proof that Russia was behind the Podesta phishing expedition either.  WikiLeaks maintains that a state actor was not the source of either. 

And yet the Russiagate myth persists. It is useful in so many ways for those in the U.S. who still want to ratchet up even more tension with Russia (as though Ukraine isn’t enough) and for a political party to perhaps again explain away an election loss if it happens in November. 

Thanks to Bill Binney and two other VIPS very senior NSA “alumni”, and the detailed charts and other data revealed by Edward Snowden, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) was able to publish a memorandum on Dec. 12, 2016 that, based on technical evidence, labeled the Russian hacking allegations “baseless.” The following July we issued a similar VIPS  memo, with the title asking the neuralgic question, “Was the ‘Russian Hack’ an Inside Job?” The question lingers.

Shameless or Just Dumb? Michael van Landingham brags to Rolling Stone that he wrote the first draft of the meretricious cornerstone of Russiagate, the “Intelligence Community” Assessment falsely blaming the Russians for helping Trump defeat Hillary in 2016https://t.co/1yWupvqvcg

— Ray McGovern (@raymcgovern) July 30, 2024

I have now posted an item on X to call attention to this latest Russiagate indignity.

I cannot escape the conclusion that journalism is not like war: In war the victors get to write the history; in today’s journalism, the losers — who get it wrong — get to write it.

O Tempora, O Mores!

With a net approval rate of 13 percent, Democratic nominee for the vice presidency, Tim Walz, is only the 36th most popular governor in the country. He currently is the first in command in Minnesota.

However, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, other governors who were reportedly being considered for Kamala Harris’ running mate in the upcoming 2024 election are much more popular at home, namely Andy Beshear, who has a net approval rate of 40 percent in Kentucky, and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who places 16th with a net approval of 25 percent. This is according to data collected by Morning Consult.

You will find more infographics at Statista

However, according to NBC, Walz and Harris reportedly got along best in person and the Democratic nominee for president felt that he was best suited for a role of supporting the president loyally.

Walz, who has (admittedly controversial) military experience in the Army National Guard, worked a blue collar job in addition to having been a teacher and is a gun-owning hunter, is hoped to appeal to moderates and voters from non-coastal states and therefore complement Harris’ profile. 

Voters describe Walz as “normal” and “genuine”, but his policies are progressive despite his regular guy image, which might have also endeared him to Harris and her campaign. However, Walz’s stance has also caused pushback among more conservative voters in Minnesota, resulting in a lowish net approval.

Additionally, he has been criticized both for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the protest that followed the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis in 2020.