The Patriots

By: Trevor Schakohl, Daily Caller, on September 17, 2022

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals preserved Texas state law Friday that would stop large social media platforms from restricting particular opinions.

Texas’ HB 20 was signed last year and generally prohibits platforms with over 50 million monthly U.S. users from censoring them based on their viewpoints. The Computer Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and the NetChoice organization, representing social media companies, argued that aspects of the law were unconstitutional but failed to convince the court.

“In urging such sweeping relief, the platforms offer a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment,” the court’s majority decision said. “That Amendment, of course, protects every person’s right to ‘the freedom of speech.’ But the platforms argue that buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech.”

The appeals court must give the district court that previously decided the case written instructions for the law to become effective, according to Politico. A 5-4 May U.S. Supreme Court ruling had halted the law from going into force after an emergency request by the CCIA and NetChoice.

Appealing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated the circuit court’s decision Friday, tweeting, “#BigTech CANNOT censor the political voices of ANY Texan! The 5th Circuit ‘reject[s] the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say.”

CCIA President Matt Schruers decried the ruling, stating, “Forcing private companies to give equal treatment to all viewpoints on their platforms places foreign propaganda and extremism on equal footing with decent Internet users, and places Americans at risk,” according to The Hill.

The Supreme Court could still be asked to directly consider the law’s validity, the outlet reported.

In May, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a block on enforcing parts of Florida Senate Bill 7072, which would require social media platforms to explain the reasons for individual acts of supposed censorship, deplatforming and shadow banning and stop them from censoring a “journalistic enterprise based on the content of its publication or broadcast,” according to The National Law Review.

“We are disappointed that the Fifth Circuit’s split decision undermines First Amendment protections and creates a circuit split with the unanimous decision of the Eleventh Circuit,” NetChoice Vice President and General Counsel Carl Szabo said in a Friday press release. “We remain convinced that when the U.S. Supreme Court hears one of our cases, it will uphold the First Amendment rights of websites, platforms, and apps.”

Source:  https://gellerreport.com/2022/09/federal-court-against-big-tech.html/?lctg=148053577

by Dr. Douglas G. Frank

"Oregon Lawsuit Update"

I am going to be testifying in Washington County, Oregon this week.

This is an important case, because the SoS and AG have admitted in formal court documents that their machines are wirelessly accessible, and that in addition to their STATE elections being compromised, our NATIONAL elections can also be compromised because the devices are **wirelessly accessible*** even when they are not connected to local networks.

And Oregon is not alone. Election officials in other states have made similar admissions, not to mention the system vendors themselves.

Of course, this is what we have been saying for twenty months now, despite the false and misleading mantra, “The machines are not connected to the internet.”

Ignorant election officials think that because their machines are not hard wired, or not connected to a local hotspot, or are “air-gapped,” or only connected to “internal secure networks” that their elections are secure.

This reveals so much ignorance on the topic that it makes me question their qualifications or their integrity, and wonder if they are complicit.

The internal modems can simply connect to any convenient hotspot or a local cell tower.

And we know they do… we have electronic recordings of it taking place.

By Mattathias Schwartz

The subpoena, issued in November, requests records relating to McGonigal and a shadowy consulting firm called Spectrum Risk Solutions. A week after the subpoena was issued, a Soviet-born immigrant named Sergey Shestakov said in a separate filing that McGonigal had helped him "facilitate" an introduction between Spectrum and Deripaska's aide. The filing also states that McGonigal helped introduce the aide to Kobre & Kim, a New York law firm that specializes in representing clients who are being investigated on suspicion of "fraud and misconduct." Shestakov, who has been identified on TV panels as a former Soviet foreign ministry official and former chief of staff to the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, reported receiving $33,000 for the referrals.

While it wouldn't necessarily have been illegal for McGonigal to work on behalf of Deripaska, failing to disclose activities covered by the Foreign Agents Registration Act, such as lobbying and public relations, is punishable by a $250,000 fine and up to five years in prison. Deripaska was sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2018 for acting as an agent for the Kremlin, and has been accused of ordering the murder of a businessman. "If McGonigal is mixed up in any way shape or form with Deripaska, that strikes me as unseemly, to put it politely," says Tim Weiner, the author of "Enemies: A History of the FBI."


It is not clear whether McGonigal is a target of the grand-jury investigation, or simply a subject whose activities are somehow related to it. And there is nothing in the court documents or elsewhere to suggest that McGonigal behaved inappropriately during the FBI's investigation of the Trump campaign. But the materials requested in the witness subpoena raise questions about whether a top FBI agent may have been tapping the connections he made during his years of public service for private gain — an all-too-common practice among Washington insiders. And whatever McGonigal's actions, the fact that he has been swept up in a grand-jury investigation is highly unusual. According to a former senior official at the Justice Department who asked not to be identified, prosecutors almost never consider charges against someone so high up in the FBI. "It's very rare that former FBI people at all, and certainly former senior FBI people, wind up as grand-jury targets," the official said.

The federal scrutiny of McGonigal is especially striking given his work at the FBI. Before his retirement in 2018, McGonigal led the WikiLeaks investigation into Chelsea Manning, busted Bill Clinton's national security advisor Sandy Berger for removing classified material from a National Archives reading room, and led the search for a Chinese mole inside the CIA. In 2016, when reports surfaced that Russia had hacked the email system of the Democratic National Committee, McGonigal was serving as chief of the cybercrimes section at FBI headquarters in Washington. In that capacity, he was one of the first officials to learn that a Trump campaign official had bragged that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton, sparking the investigation known as Operation Crossfire Hurricane. Later that year, FBI Director James Comey promoted McGonigal to oversee counterintelligence operations in New York. 

According to the witness subpoena, prosecutors are also looking into whether McGonigal has ties to the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as any "payments or gifts" he was provided by the governments of Kosovo, Montenegro, and Albania.

SOURCE: https://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-fbi-charles-mcgonigal-trump-russia-grand-jury-oleg-deripaska-2022-9

by Pamela Geller

In late January 2000, 9/11 hujackers Khalid Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi both traveled to Los Angeles and then moved to San Diego, where they associated with a former subject of an FBI investigation and also lived with a long-time FBI asset. 19 days prior to September 11, 2001, the CIA notifies the FBI to add Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi to the terrorist watchlist. This was all covered by then FBI Director Robert Mueller.

From: A Review of the FBI’s Handling of Intelligence Information Related to the September 11 Attacks
Special Report
(November 2004), Released Publicly June 2006
Office of the Inspector General, Justice.gov:

“While in San Diego, September 11 Hijackers: Khalid Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi associated with Omar al-Bayoumi, a person whom the FBI had previously investigated, and they also lived with an active, FBI informational asset.“

In the summer of 2001, the CIA and the FBI had various interactions regarding the FBI’s investigation of the Cole attack.These interactions touched on the participants in the January 2000 Malaysia meetings and information developed by the CIA about the Malaysia meetings.

• In August 2001, the FBI learned that Mihdhar had entered the United States on July 4 and began searching for him in early September 2001. It also learned that the purported mastermind of the Cole attack had met with Mihdhar and Hazmi in the Malaysia meetings. The FBI did not locate him before the September 11 attacks.

Source:  https://gellerreport.com/2022/09/two-9-11-hijackers-tied-to-saudi-intelligence-lived-with-long-time-fbi-informant-before-the-2001-attacks.html/?lctg=148053577