Things to Keep an Eye On
J.D. Vance and NATO, what's up with Opus Dei, FTC's social media report, Andy Harris takes over Freedom Caucus, 23andMe implodes
J.D. Vance and NATO
This was a very hamfisted moment from Vance this week. He presents himself fairly well on the campaign trail, but he’s not good at this, and the way he handled this moment suggests he’s got issues with the Silicon Valley network that is very corrupt. He said that support for NATO should be contingent on American-style free speech for Europe, basically threatening to cut off support for the alliance if the Europeans don’t accept Elon Musk’s approach to it.
The Europeans are not going to take very kindly to it. The problem is that Musk’s Chinese and Russian issues will make the Europeans think what is being proposed here is the U.S. imposing that on them.
Europe is eventually going to be forced to pony up more for their own defense. What is going to cause that is a settlement in Ukraine that involves territorial concessions, and with the conflict more or less frozen in the East of the country, that’s going to come. There’s no amount of money that can really change the strategic situation.
So the trade-off is going to be that most of Ukraine gets to choose the West, and Putin gets to claim to have liberated the Russian-speaking part of the country. The knock-on effect of this, which it’s fair to call a major victory for Russian doctrine and propaganda, is to bring an end to one of the assumptions of the postwar era, which is that these sorts of territorial concessions are always illegitimate. Russia has never really thought that way. But once that goes, people will look around at each other in European capitals and say to each other, wait a minute, we need to think more seriously about our defense. There’s a way of playing this that turns out very well for people with Vance’s general orientation, but he’s messing it up.
FTC social media report
This is required reading.
One of the finest things the FTC has produced in years, it synthesizes a lot of the stuff that’s been going on.
Rep. Andy Harris becomes Freedom Caucus Chair
This is good. Harris is a Catholic Navy doctor from Maryland, so it’s better for him to run the Freedom Caucus than a Mormon from Arizona like Rep. Andy Biggs, his opponent for the role:
What’s going to happen with Opus Dei
The hotly anticipated book by Gareth Gore comes out on October 1, and the story this week in New York has a few quotes from him. It isn’t clear from those quotes that Gore really has the goods, but we’ll see. In any case a lot of this really has to do with Leonard Leo, who is being investigated by the DC Attorney General. So with those two things waiting in the wings, Opus Dei is going to be a hot topic pretty soon. Last August the Holy See took a small step to rein them in, there could be more after this comes to the fore.
Not all of the Catholic right stuff has to do with Opus Dei, for instance John Yep, of Catholics for Catholics, featured in this recent Vanity Fair piece, appears to be involved with Regnum Christi.
The issue with Opus Dei is its well-known influence within federal agencies, with these Catholics being one of several groups that prospered after 9/11 in the federal government, which probably has a lot to do with why Opus Dei-connected people find themselves unable to state the obvious with respect to Israel. With the post-9/11 world sort of coming to an end at the moment, like the Mormons and Likudniks, they’re having a hard time.
23andMe’s entire board resigns
This is good, too. The company is totally worthless. About seven million records were stolen in the hack, meaning the value of the company is based on the other eight out of fifteen, and it has a ton of other liabilities. Via Axios:
All seven independent directors of 23andMe resigned on Tuesday night, in a stunning rebuke of CEO Anne Wojcicki's efforts to take the genetic testing company private.
Zoom in: Among those quitting were longtime VC backers of 23andMe, like Sequoia Capital's Roelof Botha and xFund's Patrick Chung.
Catch up quick: 23andMe went public in 2021 via a SPAC formed by Richard Branson's Virgin Group, securing a $3.1 billion valuation. But its shares have since traded down more than 95%, settling yesterday at just 34 cents per share.
Israeli spyware updates
The State Department imposed visa restrictions and OFAC sanctioned five people close to Intellexa this week:
Today, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned five individuals and one entity associated with the Intellexa Consortium for their role in developing, operating, and distributing commercial spyware technology that presents a significant threat to the national security of the United States. These designations complement concerted U.S. government actions against commercial spyware vendors, including previous sanctions against individuals and entities associated with the Intellexa Consortium; the Department of Commerce’s addition of commercial spyware vendors to the Entity List; and the Department of State’s visa ban policy targeting those who misuse or profit from the misuse of commercial spyware, subsequently exercised on thirteen individuals.
An Israeli spyware salesman was found dead in Medellin:
Colombia’s police are investigating the death of an Israeli citizen whose LinkedIn claims he worked for Sandvine, a Canadian company that has been accused of enabling dictatorships.
The death of alleged Sandvine sales engineer Yariv Bokor came days after President Gustavo Petro announced that Sandvine’s former sister company in Israel, NSO Group, sold spyware to Colombia’s Police Intelligence Directorate (DIPOL).
And four British citizens filed a criminal complaint against NSO Group. These are our first documented cases in the UK. If Israel was doing it there, they were doing it here, too:
Four people surveilled with Pegasus spyware in the U.K. have filed a criminal complaint with London police against its manufacturer as well as a dissolved private equity firm that previously held a majority stake in the spyware company.
The hacking of the activists and journalist phones occurred between 2018 and 2020, according to the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), which helped the victims bring the complaint Wednesday against Pegasus maker NSO Group, former parent Novalpina Capital and other entities.
Germany has also halted weapons exports to Israel.
Rebel News denied tax credits
Sorry, Ezra! It’s too bad your website sucks!
A Federal Court judge has upheld the government's decision that far-right media outlet Rebel News doesn't qualify for journalism tax credits because it doesn't produce enough original content.
Rebel News applied in May 2021 to be designated as a qualified Canadian journalism organization, but was rejected by the Canada Revenue Agency, which found that less than one per cent of its content was original news.
St. Louis stories
A lot of weird stuff is happening in St. Louis. The second man who allegedly tried to assassinate Trump had a house there:
The man at the center of a second assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump owns property in the St. Louis area.
Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, is facing federal charges for sneaking onto a Florida golf course Sunday and pointing a rifle at Trump.
On Monday, First Alert 4 Investigates uncovered that Routh’s fiancée, Kathleen Shaffer, owns several properties in St. Louis County. First Alert 4 has since discovered that Routh is listed on records for property in southwest St. Louis County.
Naturally, a lot of these woke incentive programs are being defrauded and misused:
Two operators of St. Louis area apartment complex construction and development companies, along with their companies’ chief accountant, have been indicted and accused of conspiring to defraud the City of St. Louis Minority Business Enterprise and Women Owned Business Enterprise program to gain millions of dollars’ worth of City tax incentives.
Sidarth “Sid” Chakraverty, Victor Alston and Shijing “Poppy” Cao were indicted in U.S. District Court in St. Louis September 18 on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 11 counts of wire fraud. The indictment was unsealed Friday morning.
And this scandal is looming, the whole story is detailed and worth reading:
Tens of millions of dollars in federal grant funds are coming under increasingly intense scrutiny in the city of St. Louis after several politically connected families were awarded small business grants through a "competitive" process that went through the Mayor Tishaura Jones' office, Board of Aldermen President Green's office, Comptroller Darlene Green's office, and the head of the St. Louis Development Corporation, whom the mayor appoints.
"It leaves a bad taste in the mouth of so many people in our community," hair salon owner Tameka Stigers told 5 On Your Side on Wednesday afternoon. "The public trust is gone in our leadership. It's gone because we don't believe you. We don't believe you're going to do what you say you're going to do with the funds."
Stigers, who owns and operates a Black-owned hair salon and spa named Locs of Glory on Delmar Boulevard in North St. Louis said her application seeking funds to expand her operation and hire four to five new employees was not approved.
Stigers is just one of several small business owners who applied for a share of $37 million in funding through the North St. Louis Small Business and Non-Profit Grant Program, which comes from American Rescue Plan Act funds. Many of them feel they were unfairly left out while they watched families with political clout get ahead.
Kansas cult leaders convicted
This is an interesting one:
Six members of a Kansas-based cult have been convicted in a scheme to house children in overcrowded, rodent-infested facilities and force them to work up to 16 hours a day without pay while subjecting them to beatings and other abuse. The children, prosecutors say, were told they would burn in "eternal hellfire" if they left.
The defendants were either high-ranking members of the organization formerly known as the United Nation of Islam and the Value Creators, or were wives of the late founder, Royall Jenkins, the U.S. Department of Justice said Monday in announcing the verdict.
KKR and Axel Springer nearing breakup
This would make Politico a strictly German company instead of a German-Chinese one. From FT:
German billionaire Mathias Döpfner and KKR are nearing a deal to split up the media giant Axel Springer, in a move that would allow one of the world’s largest private equity firms to bow out of news media after five turbulent years.
The two sides are expected to discuss the proposed structure of a deal that would give KKR majority control of the company’s profitable classifieds business at a meeting of its supervisory board on Thursday, according to four people familiar with the matter.
NYC COVID czar was attending sex parties
The doctor who led New York City's response to the COVID-19 pandemic took part in sex parties and a dance while urging citizens to stay home.
Dr. Jay Varma, then-Mayor de Blasio's senior public health adviser, conceded he "participated in two private gatherings" and failed to use the best judgment.
His statement came after a conservative podcaster, Steven Crowder, posted hidden camera video of Varma talking to a woman, who is off camera, talking about the parties.
This is just hypocritical, not criminal, but the number of public corruption prosecutions in New York recently has been pretty alarming, another one this week involving the FDNY.
And, of course, also this week Diddy was frog-marched out of the Park Hyatt Hotel.
Arrests in another illegal Russian exporting scheme
This one involved drone parts:
“This defendant attempted to procure and illegally export dual-use microelectronics with military applications, and ultimately ship them back to Russia,” said Special Agent in Charge Spradlin, of HSI Denver. “Mr. Postovoy will now face justice for his duplicity. Our stellar agents will continue to investigate these crimes alongside our strike force partners and the Department of Justice and hold accountable these criminals who threaten the security of the United States.”
As alleged, Postovoy’s companies included WowCube HK Limited, JST Group Hong Kong, Jove HK Limited, all based in Hong Kong, and the Vector Group in Russia. Postovoy repeatedly concealed and misstated the true end users and end destinations of the microelectronics by submitting false information on documents. He transshipped items that were ultimately destined for Russia through intermediary destinations, including Hong Kong, Switzerland, and elsewhere, and received payments in U.S. dollars from foreign bank accounts. His companies transferred funds for the purchase and shipment of the goods through bank accounts in Hong Kong, Russia, and elsewhere to bank accounts in the United States, including bank accounts maintained by the U.S. suppliers of microelectronics and other sensitive technologies.
This was one of five technology-related cases the Department of Justice published a statement about this week, one of the others involved lasers for use in nuclear technology.
CEO of Kubient pleads guilty
This one involved a digital advertising company:
In or about May 2017, ROBERTS founded Kubient, Inc. (“Kubient”), a digital advertising technology company headquartered in New York, New York. From in or about August 2020 to in or about November 2023, Kubient’s shares were publicly traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker “KBNT.” At various times relevant to the Information, ROBERTS was Kubient’s Chief Executive Officer, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Interim Chief Executive Officer, President, and Chief Strategy Officer.
From at least in or about October 2019 through at least in or about March 2021, ROBERTS executed an accounting fraud scheme at Kubient. During that time, ROBERTS caused Kubient to improperly recognize more than $1.3 million in fraudulent revenue in Kubient’s financial statements (the “Fraudulent Revenue”). The Fraudulent Revenue was over 94% of Kubient’s reported revenue for 2020 at the time of its initial public offering (“IPO”) in or about August 2020, over 74% of its reported revenue for 2020 at the time of its secondary public offering in or about December 2020, and approximately 45% of Kubient’s reported revenue for all of 2020, as reported in Kubient’s 2020 annual financial statement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) on SEC Form 10-K in or about March 2021. With his scheme, ROBERTS misled Kubient’s auditors and deceived the investing public about Kubient’s financial condition.
"Europe is eventually going to be forced to pony up more for their own defense."
Except Europe is broke. Tom Lluongo has the receipts. They're also about to experience civil disorder on an unprecedented level.
There's also something else that's getting hardly any attention, and it's really big: Property tax fraud on the order of billions of dollars. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZK2a8e9gqA