Things to Keep an Eye On
Mahmoud Khalil files Klan Act suit, Jens Spahn forced out, CSIS officer briefs Congress on Indian transnational repression, proof Morocco was using Israeli spyware, adtech as weapon
Jens Spahn forced out of CDU chair for buying baby
Peter Thiel’s top ally in the German government was forced out this week in a surrogacy controversy. His party, and previously himself, is opposed to the practice. Renting wombs is banned in Germany but he went to the U.S. to have it done. Thiel’s network has been taking major L’s recently, with Palantir’s struggles, Dialog being thrown out of an Irish estate, and a lawsuit by a private flight attendant against his husband for allegedly throwing a bag of food at her.
Ex-CSIS officer Dan Stanton briefs Congress on Indian transnational repression
Important for Congress to be up to date on this, especially after the Bishnoi Gang case:
A former senior CSIS intelligence officer warned U.S. congressional representatives and staff in Washington Tuesday that foreign states such as India are increasingly using transnational criminal groups to outsource surveillance, coercion, intimidation and lethal violence. Dan Stanton, who spent 32 years in Canada’s spy agency and is now director of the national security program at the University of Ottawa, told a Capitol Hill briefing that this country’s experience with transnational repression shows hostile countries are using criminal organizations to target diaspora groups because it gives them plausible deniability.
Proof Morocco was using Israeli spyware
From OCCRP this week, this may have been the use case that led to Emmanuel Macron being targeted. Also from them, a report Shalev Hulio, the founder of NSO Group, was using an Israeli diplomatic passport.
California swastika hoax brings federal charges
From DOJ:
The Justice Department announced today that Ziheng “Tony” Fang was arrested on a federal charge of false information and hoaxes. Fang made an initial appearance on July 10, in federal court in San Jose, California.
According to the allegations in a criminal complaint and court documents filed on July 9, Fang, 30, of San Jose, California, wrote a hateful and threatening message placed in a plastic cover sheet taped to the bathroom wall of a men’s restroom on the campus of San Jose State University (SJSU). Fang is a graduate student at SJSU, pursuing his Master’s Degree in Data Science.
Craig Whitlock gets the Fat Leonard interview
Read it here, he wants a pardon. Hopefully Fat Leonard can fork over a cool million or two to the Israelis, then maybe it will happen.
Charles Johnson case updates
The receiver in his Texas case has been allowed to resign. There hasn’t been a new report since April. And the big Clearview AI class-action judgment was thrown out by the Seventh Circuit this week.
Trump’s IRS lawsuit ruled improper
From AP:
President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over his leaked tax returns was filed for an “improper purpose,” a judge said Monday as she referred one of his lawyers for potential disciplinary action and characterized the $10 billion complaint as an exercise in self-dealing.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams accused Trump and his lawyers in a scathing ruling of having manipulated the court system when he sued a federal agency under his control, bypassing a requirement that parties in a lawsuit must have adverse interests. The lawsuit ended in a settlement that granted the president immunity from tax auditsand established a $1.776 billion fund to compensate Trump allies who believe they have been unjustly persecuted.
Warren Buffett cuts donations to Gates Foundation
Allegedly due to Gates’ ties to Jeffrey Epstein:
The omission comes after The Wall Street Journal reported that Buffett has held off on his customary donation to the Gates Foundation while awaiting the outcome of a review into the foundation’s ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In a March interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick, Buffett said he had not spoken with Gates “at all since the whole thing was unveiled.”
Asked whether the two remained close friends, Buffett said they had shared “great times together,” but added, “Until it gets cleared up ... I just don’t think it makes sense to do a lot of talking.“
Class-action suit over Google Nest collection of biometric data
From Bloomberg last week:
Google LLC’s Nest cameras collect the biometric data of Americans without their consent, according to a class privacy suit filed Thursday in federal court.
The Virginia residents suing Google in the case filed Thursday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California said the cameras scan all bystanders regardless of age or consent, and collect additional non-biometric signals like body size to improve recognition. It’s at least the third lawsuit over the familiar face detection feature that allows the camera to recognize frequent visitors.
Adtech used to track military smartphones
This is going to become a major scandal, the senate is already looking into it. First reported by the Financial Times, NYT:
Iranian cyberattacks exploited vulnerabilities in outdated network technology to locate the phones of U.S. personnel in the Middle East, data released on Tuesday suggested.
The Mobile Surveillance Monitor, a research initiative that studies mobile espionage, detected a wave of signals across multiple networks in the Middle East at the outset of the United States and Israel’s war against Iran in February. Gary Miller, a cybersecurity researcher who founded the nonprofit that runs the research initiative, said the data was indicative of a “coordinated attack campaign.”
Mahmoud Khalil files Klan Act suit against feds
If he even gets to discovery, he may be able to see how the State Department is working with Israeli assets:
Columbia University protester Mahmoud Khalil has filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against senior Trump administration officials and three private organizations, alleging they conspired to deprive him of his constitutional rights.
Khalil said the Trump officials and the private groups sought to punish him and intimidate him because of his support for the Palestinian freedom movement, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in New York’s Southern District.
The lawsuit brought under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 says the groups sought to make an example of Khalil to intimidate the movement for Palestinian rights.
Ukraine’s prime minister steps down
From TRT:
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko has resigned as part of a government reshuffle ordered by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The Ukrainian leader has yet to name a replacement and has said only that Kiev is “changing its political strategy” amid “new challenges and new tasks”.
Ukraine’s parliament formally approved Svyrydenko’s resignation in a vote on Tuesday.
Spanish cocaine bust linked to U.S.-based SPAC, fintech firms
Crazy story from Bloomberg:
According to investigators, Toran also employed Francisco de Borbon, the son of a duke and a distant cousin to Spain’s King Felipe, and Ketan Seth, an American investor based in a mansion in Newport Beach’s upscale Dover Shores neighborhood.
Investigators say that Seth and de Borbon were managing partners at Alpha Trading, a Californian firm that was funneling Toran’s drug money from offshore accounts at a bank in Panama. …
Seth had other interests. He operated several UPS shipping outlets in New York during the 2010s but got tied up in disputes with landlords that resulted in judgments for unpaid bills of more than $300,000, according to legal filings.
In 2025, Seth and de Borbon founded Blue Acquisition Corp. as a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), targeting data centers and artificial intelligence. Wesley Clark, the former four-star U.S. Army general, became Blue’s chairman.
The firm, which lists Seth’s house in Newport Beach as its headquarters, raised about $200 million last June through an initial public offering and forged ahead with a deal to acquire a data center in Niagara Falls.
or L’s recently, with Palantir’s struggles, Dialog being thrown out of an Irish estate, and a lawsuit by a private flight attendant against his husband for allegedly throwing a bag of food at her.
Ex-CSIS officer Dan Stanton briefs Congress on Indian transnational repression
Important for Congress to be up to date on this, especially after the Bishnoi Gang case:
A former senior CSIS intelligence officer warned U.S. congressional representatives and staff in Washington Tuesday that foreign states such as India are increasingly using transnational criminal groups to outsource surveillance, coercion, intimidation and lethal violence. Dan Stanton, who spent 32 years in Canada’s spy agency and is now director of the national security program at the University of Ottawa, told a Capitol Hill briefing that this country’s experience with transnational repression shows hostile countries are using criminal organizations to target diaspora groups because it gives them plausible deniability.
Proof Morocco was using Israeli spyware
From OCCRP this week, this may have been the use case that led to Emmanuel Macron being targeted. Also from them, a report Shalev Hulio, the founder of NSO Group, was using an Israeli diplomatic passport.
California swastika hoax brings federal charges
From DOJ:
The Justice Department announced today that Ziheng “Tony” Fang was arrested on a federal charge of false information and hoaxes. Fang made an initial appearance on July 10, in federal court in San Jose, California.
According to the allegations in a criminal complaint and court documents filed on July 9, Fang, 30, of San Jose, California, wrote a hateful and threatening message placed in a plastic cover sheet taped to the bathroom wall of a men’s restroom on the campus of San Jose State University (SJSU). Fang is a graduate student at SJSU, pursuing his Master’s Degree in Data Science.
Craig Whitlock gets the Fat Leonard interview
Read it here, he wants a pardon. Hopefully Fat Leonard can fork over a cool million or two to the Israelis, then maybe it will happen.
Charles Johnson case updates
The receiver in his Texas case has been allowed to resign. There hasn’t been a new report since April. And the big Clearview AI class-action judgment was thrown out by the Seventh Circuit this week.
Trump’s IRS lawsuit ruled improper
From AP:
President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over his leaked tax returns was filed for an “improper purpose,” a judge said Monday as she referred one of his lawyers for potential disciplinary action and characterized the $10 billion complaint as an exercise in self-dealing.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams accused Trump and his lawyers in a scathing ruling of having manipulated the court system when he sued a federal agency under his control, bypassing a requirement that parties in a lawsuit must have adverse interests. The lawsuit ended in a settlement that granted the president immunity from tax auditsand established a $1.776 billion fund to compensate Trump allies who believe they have been unjustly persecuted.
Warren Buffett cuts donations to Gates Foundation
Allegedly due to Gates’ ties to Jeffrey Epstein:
The omission comes after The Wall Street Journal reported that Buffett has held off on his customary donation to the Gates Foundation while awaiting the outcome of a review into the foundation’s ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In a March interview with CNBC’s Becky Quick, Buffett said he had not spoken with Gates “at all since the whole thing was unveiled.”
Asked whether the two remained close friends, Buffett said they had shared “great times together,” but added, “Until it gets cleared up ... I just don’t think it makes sense to do a lot of talking.“
Class-action suit over Google Nest collection of biometric data
From Bloomberg last week:
Google LLC’s Nest cameras collect the biometric data of Americans without their consent, according to a class privacy suit filed Thursday in federal court.
The Virginia residents suing Google in the case filed Thursday in the US District Court for the Northern District of California said the cameras scan all bystanders regardless of age or consent, and collect additional non-biometric signals like body size to improve recognition. It’s at least the third lawsuit over the familiar face detection feature that allows the camera to recognize frequent visitors.
Adtech used to track military smartphones
This is going to become a major scandal, the senate is already looking into it. First reported by the Financial Times, NYT:
Iranian cyberattacks exploited vulnerabilities in outdated network technology to locate the phones of U.S. personnel in the Middle East, data released on Tuesday suggested.
The Mobile Surveillance Monitor, a research initiative that studies mobile espionage, detected a wave of signals across multiple networks in the Middle East at the outset of the United States and Israel’s war against Iran in February. Gary Miller, a cybersecurity researcher who founded the nonprofit that runs the research initiative, said the data was indicative of a “coordinated attack campaign.”
Mahmoud Khalil files Klan Act suit against feds
If he even gets to discovery, he may be able to see how the State Department is working with Israeli assets:
Columbia University protester Mahmoud Khalil has filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against senior Trump administration officials and three private organizations, alleging they conspired to deprive him of his constitutional rights.
Khalil said the Trump officials and the private groups sought to punish him and intimidate him because of his support for the Palestinian freedom movement, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in New York’s Southern District.
The lawsuit brought under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 says the groups sought to make an example of Khalil to intimidate the movement for Palestinian rights.
Ukraine’s prime minister steps down
From TRT:
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko has resigned as part of a government reshuffle ordered by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The Ukrainian leader has yet to name a replacement and has said only that Kiev is “changing its political strategy” amid “new challenges and new tasks”.
Ukraine’s parliament formally approved Svyrydenko’s resignation in a vote on Tuesday.
Spanish cocaine bust linked to U.S.-based SPAC, fintech firms
Crazy story from Bloomberg:
According to investigators, Toran also employed Francisco de Borbon, the son of a duke and a distant cousin to Spain’s King Felipe, and Ketan Seth, an American investor based in a mansion in Newport Beach’s upscale Dover Shores neighborhood.
Investigators say that Seth and de Borbon were managing partners at Alpha Trading, a Californian firm that was funneling Toran’s drug money from offshore accounts at a bank in Panama. …
Seth had other interests. He operated several UPS shipping outlets in New York during the 2010s but got tied up in disputes with landlords that resulted in judgments for unpaid bills of more than $300,000, according to legal filings.
In 2025, Seth and de Borbon founded Blue Acquisition Corp. as a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), targeting data centers and artificial intelligence. Wesley Clark, the former four-star U.S. Army general, became Blue’s chairman.
The firm, which lists Seth’s house in Newport Beach as its headquarters, raised about $200 million last June through an initial public offering and forged ahead with a deal to acquire a data center in Niagara Falls.