Of Hacks and Israeli Hacking

Mercy and Julian Assange and Hunter Biden

I recently discovered that there was an elicitation attempt on someone close to me to learn about me. This is unacceptable and I have already contacted law enforcement.

The hope was that they would shut me up or down. I made it clear that every time I am targeted I will retaliate by outing a Likud operation.

This will continue until the Zersetzung efforts against me are concluded. I will not be scapegoated nor allow whom I care about and love to come under threat.

Yours truly on the steps of the Ecuadorian embassy in 2017

I’ve changed a lot over the years — I supported Trump in ‘16 and Biden in ‘20 — but one thing hasn’t. I still support the release of Julian Assange and a real inquiry into the Israeli hacking around the 2016 election.

Happily I’m now joined by Anthony Albanese, the Australian prime minister, who recently called for Julian Assange’s detention to be ended. He’s right and I look forward to still more people joining the chorus.

It’s well known that I met with Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in August 2017. I can only tell you what Julian Assange told me himself — that he strongly suspects that he was used by Israeli intelligence (or those connected to it) when he was furnished with hacked material in the 2016 political campaign.

I have now told that to the FBI and to the CIA and to other allied intelligence services about what Assange told me.

As time has gone on I have had more reason to believe that Assange was correct about the hack being Israeli in origin.

There’s the curious detail about the involvement of Zohar Lahav, an Israeli national who worked alongside casino magnate Sheldon Adelson to spy on Assange and his guests. There’s the fake report about a go-between published by Alana Goodman in the Daily Mail. Goodman is very close to the Israelis and works for the Washington Free Beacon.

In the immediate aftermath of the visit was the curious approach of Michael Isikoff who called me when I was clearing customs. How he got my number I still don’t know. I answered him quickly and said that I would speak later.

Isikoff, you’ll recall, is the one who published the debunked reporting about Korans being flushed at Gitmo.

Put simply a report from Isikoff, even if inaccurate, can make your life difficult as CIA asset Carter Page learned all too well.

Here’s Wikipedia.

A September 23, 2016 Yahoo News article written by Isikoff^[13] was cited by federal authorities in a FISA warrant application in order to justify the surveillance of Carter Page, who was alleged to have a connection to Russian authorities during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Think about that. We have a reporter with ties to the Israelis outing a CIA asset close to the Trump campaign. Carter Page’s experience, for what it’s worth, seems eerily familiar to the efforts to smear me with Ryan Mac of Forbes then BuzzFeed and now the New York Times after I helped on the Trump transition. Could it have been that there was an Israeli campaign to neutralize people they thought might be a threat to their power?

The compromising of Isikoff goes way back. Isikoff purportedly knew about the affair about President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. That is, before it was leaked through Matt Drudge who also had longstanding ties to Israeli intelligence.

Like a lot of the Israeli-compromised reporters and folks around did their utmost to make the 2016 campaign about Russian efforts, so, too, did Isikoff. Why he even produced a film titled 64 Hours In October: How One Weekend Blew Up The Rules Of American Politics about alleged Russian involvement.

But Russia didn’t act alone. The Nation recently published a rather glorious piece about the Trump campaign’s collusion with Israel.

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There was a concerted effort to scapegoat me over the Assange matter.

James Wolfe, drawing upon Isikoff’s reporting, threatened me with a subpoena for refusing to testify before the politicized Senate intelligence committee. I recorded the calls which I turned over to law enforcement.

Wolfe was arrested shortly thereafter for lying to the FBI about leaking material to reporters, including Ali Watkins with whom he was carrying on an affair. Watkins worked for BuzzFeed and then the New York Times.

I knew Wolfe was suspicious because he would call me and then immediately afterward I’d get called by CNN or the New York Times. Real subtle, that.

Of course Wolfe was leaking to Isikoff too. Isikoff published this story about my visit to see Assange.

It’s held up quite well.

A controversial “alt-right” journalist and provocateur who met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London this week says he is refusing to turn over documents and emails requested by the Senate Intelligence Committee about any contacts he has had with Russian agents, telling Yahoo News he has no intention of cooperating with the panel’s investigation.

“I’m absolutely not” going to cooperate with the committee, Charles C. Johnson said in an interview after returning from London, where he had set up a meeting this week between Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., and Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy.

“They’re going to have to subpoena me and then they’ll be sorely disappointed,” he added. Johnson said his lawyer would raise journalistic “privilege” issues to resist turning over any communications he might have had with Russian nationals or agents. The committee had requested the material in a July 27 letter it sent him, asking that the documents by turned over by Aug. 10.

Curiously none of the mentions of any of the Israeli activity made its way into Isikoff’s report.

I told Isikoff I was worried that the Senate Intelligence committee was compromised by Israeli intelligence. I pointed to the close relationships between then-Senator Richard Burr and Paul Singer, the very pro-Israel billionaire who had funded the Fusion GPS dossier that was later published by the very Israeli BuzzFeed.

I also pointed out to him that Arthur Schwartz, the consigliere to Tucker Carlson, Don Jr., Ric Grenell, and a whole host of other pro-Likud billionaires had threatened Cassandra Fairbanks and purported to be establishing a back channel with Assange.

I suspected, though, that Assange was going to be killed because of what he knew about his sources. Indeed some of my British friends told me he was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy because they were concerned about attempts to kill Assange by “a hostile foreign power.”

I haven’t a clue if that’s true but we need a full inquiry to the role of foreign intelligence agencies played and no, that’s not just Russia.

*****

I watched with some attention the MSNBC interview with President Joe Biden.

“My son has done nothing wrong. I trust him. I have faith in him. It impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him.”

I don’t think my own father would say such things about me and I’ve done a whole lot less wrong than Hunter is purported to have done.

But you know. No one f*cks with a Biden. As you know, Hunter Biden is a confidential informant and deserving of respect.

Recently the propaganda mill has gone a bit mad about Mike Morell and Antony Blinken.

The letter said the “laptop” has “has the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Except that the laptop letter was wrong. It was an Israeli operation. And the question wasn’t whether or not the material was correct — in an era of deep fakes, who could be sure? — but that the material was illegally obtained.

Nor should Morell be totally trusted. Morell, for example, resigned his senior fellowship at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government as a result of Chelsea Manning’s appointment as a senior fellow there. (If you look closely you’ll notice that Manning, who is half Welsh, is deeply aligned with the British intelligence services.)

Yes, we’re going to need to have a conversation about fifth columnists within our security services and luckily it seems we are. Note the arrests of compromised FBI, DHS, and DEA agents. We’re coming for you, you traitors. Time to pick a side.

This fight to rescue the sense making apparatus of the intelligence and law enforcement will have casualties, as all fights do. But it essential.

Now I don’t necessarily agree with everything Assange’s attorneys are doing. I would have sued Adelson’s estate, Pompeo, and not the CIA solely, for example. Worse yet, I am especially concerned about how his attorneys are being funded by compromised oligarchs like James Packer and Kim Dotcom. But what’s a family to do but accept gifts from strangers with their own ulterior motives?

But I do agree that what’s happening to Julian Assange is undignified for a free society and his cause should be taken up by the defenders of the AUKUS alliance.

I dined with Assange’s brother and father in Georgetown last year. (Hence the gay flag!)

After meeting with them and doing my own research I am thoroughly convinced that he ought not be punished for informing the public. And if he is persecuted, we need to talk about the hostile foreign intelligence agencies known as the New York Times, Washington Free Beacon, Fox News, and of course, Musk’s Twitter.