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Why is former President Obama calling forth all his defensive resources now?  Why did former national security advisor Susan Rice write her CYA letter?  Why have republicans in congress not been willing to investigate the true origins of political surveillance?  What is the reason for so much anger, desperation and opposition from a variety of interests?

In a single word in a single tweet tonight, President Trump explained it perfectly – with help from Fox News’ Tucker Carlson’s detailed breakdown” “OBAMAGATE!”…

OBAMAGATE! pic.twitter.com/pFbb6hgDhF

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2020

As around 2:15 in the clip above, Carlson explains that then president of the United States Barack Obama turned to the head of the FBI – the most powerful law enforcement official in America, and said “Continue to secretly investigate my chief political rival so I can act against him.”

Comey’s response? “Yes, sir.”

Having watched that clip in detail, here is ‘sundance’ from TheConservativeTreehouse.com laying out the details surrounding political surveillance in the era of President Obama…

With the release of recent transcripts and the declassification of material from within the IG report, the Carter Page FISA and Flynn documents showing FBI activity, there is a common misconception about why the intelligence apparatus began investigating the Trump campaign in the first place.  Why was Donald Trump considered a threat?

In this outline we hope to provide some fully cited deep source material that will explain the origin; and specifically why those inside the Intelligence Community began targeting Trump and using Confidential Human Sources against campaign officials.

During the time-frame of December 2015 through April 2016 the NSA database was being exploited by contractors within the intelligence community doing unauthorized searches.

On March 9, 2016, oversight personnel doing a review of FBI system access were alerted to thousands of unauthorized search queries of specific U.S. persons within the NSA database.

NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was made aware.

Subsequently NSA Director Rogers initiated a full compliance review of the system to identify who was doing the searches; & what searches were being conducted.

On April 18, 2016, following the preliminary audit results, Director Rogers shut down all FBI contractor access to the database after he learned FISA-702 “about”(17) and “to/from”(16) search queries were being done without authorization. Thus begins the first discovery of a much bigger background story.

When you compile the timeline with the people involved; and the specific wording of the resulting review, which was then delivered to the FISA court; and overlay the activity that was taking place in the GOP primary; what we discover is a process where the metadata collected by the NSA was being searched for political opposition research and surveillance.

Additionally, tens-of-thousands of searches were identified by the FISA court as likely extending much further than the compliance review period: “while the government reports it is unable to provide a reliable estimate of the non compliant queries since 2012, there is no apparent reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 period coincided with an unusually high error rate”.

In short, during the Obama administration the NSA database was continually used to conduct surveillance. This is the critical point that leads to understanding the origin of “Spygate”, as it unfolded in the Spring and Summer of 2016.

It was the discovery of the database exploitation and the removal of access as a surveillance tool that created their initial problem. Here’s how we can tell.

Initially in December 2015 there were 17 GOP candidates and all needed to be researched.

However, when Donald Trump won New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina the field was significantly whittled. Trump, Cruz, Rubio, Kasich and Carson remained.

On Super Tuesday, March 2, 2016, Donald Trump won seven states (VT, AR, VA, GA, AL, TN, MA) it was then clear that Trump was the GOP frontrunner with momentum to become the presumptive nominee. On March 5th, Trump won Kentucky and Louisiana; and on March 8th Trump won Michigan, Mississippi and Hawaii.

The next day, March 9th, NSA security alerts warned internal oversight personnel that something sketchy was going on.

This timing is not coincidental. As FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer later wrote in her report, “many of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges.” Put another way: attributes belonging to a specific individual(s) were being targeted and queried, unlawfully. Given what was later discovered, it seems obvious the primary search target, over multiple date ranges, was Donald Trump.

There were tens-of-thousands of unauthorized search queries; and as Judge Collyer stated in her report, there is no reason to believe the 85% non compliant rate was any different from the abuse of the NSA database going back to 2012.

As you will see below the NSA database was how political surveillance was being conducted during Obama’s second term in office. However, when the system was flagged, and when NSA Director Mike Rogers shut down “contractor” access to the system, the system users needed to develop another way to get access.

Mike Rogers shuts down access on April 18, 2016. On April 19, 2016, Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson’s wife, Mary Jacoby visits the White House. Immediately thereafter, the DNC and Clinton campaign contract Fusion GPS… who then hire Christopher Steele.

Knowing it was federal “contractors”, outside government with access to the system, doing the unauthorized searches, the question becomes: who were the contractors?

The possibilities are quite vast. Essentially anyone the FBI or intelligence apparatus was using could have participated. Crowdstrike was a known FBI contractor; they were also contracted by the DNC. Shawn Henry was the former head of the FBI office in DC and is now the head of Crowdstrike; a rather dubious contractor for the government and a politically connected data security and forensic company. James Comey’s special friend Daniel Richman was an unpaid FBI “special employee” with security access to the database. Nellie Ohr began working for Fusion-GPS on the Trump project in November 2015 and she was a CIA contractor; and it’s entirely likely Glenn Simpson or people within his Fusion-GPS network were also contractors for the intelligence community.

Remember the Sharyl Attkisson computer intrusions? It’s all part of this same network; Attkisson even names Shawn Henry as a defendant in her ongoing lawsuit.

All of the aforementioned names, and so many more, held a political agenda in 2016.

It seems likely if the NSA flags were never triggered then the contracted system users would have continued exploiting the NSA database for political opposition research; which would then be funneled to the Clinton team. However, once the unauthorized flags were triggered, the system users (including those inside the official intelligence apparatus) needed to find another back-door to continue… Again, the timing becomes transparent.

Immediately after NSA flags were raised March 9th; the same intelligence agencies began using confidential human sources (CHS’s) to run into the Trump campaign. By activating intelligence assets like Joseph Mifsud and Stefan Halper the IC (CIA, FBI) and system users had now created an authorized way to continue the same political surveillance operations.

When Donald Trump hired Paul Manafort on March 28, 2016, it was a perfect scenario for those doing the surveillance. Manafort was a known entity to the FBI and was previously under investigation. Paul Manafort’s entry into the Trump orbit was perfect for Glenn Simpson to sell his prior research on Manafort as a Trump-Russia collusion script two weeks later.

The shift from “unauthorized exploitation of the NSA database” to legally authorized exploitation of the NSA database was now in place. This was how they continued the political surveillance. This is the confluence of events that originated “spygate”, or what officially blossomed into the FBI investigation known as “Crossfire Hurricane” on July 31.

If the NSA flags were never raised; and if Director Rogers had never initiated the compliance audit; and if the political contractors were never blocked from access to the database; they would never have needed to create a legal back-door, a justification to retain the surveillance. The political operatives/contractors would have just continued the targeted metadata exploitation.

Once they created the surveillance door, Fusion-GPS was then needed to get the FBI known commodity of Chris Steele activated as a pipeline. Into that pipeline all system users pushed opposition research. However, one mistake from the NSA database extraction during an “about” query shows up as a New Yorker named Michael Cohen in Prague.

That misinterpreted data from a FISA-702 “about query” is then piped to Steele and turns up inside the dossier; it was the wrong Michael Cohen. It wasn’t Trump’s lawyer, it was an art dealer from New York City with the same name; the same “identifier”.

A DEEP DIVE – How Did It Work?

Start by reviewing the established record from the 99-page FISC opinion rendered by Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer on April 26, 2017. Review the details within the FISC opinion.

I would strongly urge everyone to read the FISC report (full pdf below) because Judge Collyer outlines how the DOJ, which includes the FBI, had an “institutional lack of candor” in responses to the FISA court. In essence, the Obama administration was continually lying to the FISA court about their activity, and the rate of fourth amendment violations for illegal searches and seizures of U.S. persons’ private information for multiple years.

Unfortunately, due to intelligence terminology Judge Collyer’s brief and ruling is not an easy read for anyone unfamiliar with the FISA processes. That complexity also helps the media avoid discussing it; and as a result most Americans have no idea the scale and scope of the Obama-era surveillance issues. So we’ll try to break down the language.

Top Secret FISA Court Order… by The Conservative Treehouse on Scribd

For the sake of brevity and common understanding CTH will highlight the most pertinent segments showing just how systemic and troublesome the unlawful electronic surveillance was.

Early in 2016 NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers was alerted of a significant uptick in FISA-702(17) “About” queries using the FBI/NSA database that holds all metadata records on every form of electronic communication.

The NSA compliance officer alerted Admiral Mike Rogers who then initiated a full compliance audit on/around March 9th, 2016, for the period of November 1st, 2015, through May 1st, 2016.

While the audit was ongoing, due to the severity of the results that were identified, Admiral Mike Rogers stopped anyone from using the 702(17) “about query” option, and went to the extraordinary step of blocking all FBI contractor access to the database on April 18, 2016 (keep these dates in mind).

Here are some significant segments:

The key takeaway from these first paragraphs is how the search query results were exported from the NSA database to users who were not authorized to see the material. The FBI contractors were conducting searches and then removing, or ‘exporting’, the results. Later on, the FBI said all of the exported material was deleted.

Searching the highly classified NSA database is essentially a function of filling out search boxes to identify the user-initiated search parameter and get a return on the search result.

♦ FISA-702(16) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person (“702”); and the “16” is a check box to initiate a search based on “To and From“. Example, if you put in a date and a phone number and check “16” as the search parameter the user will get the returns on everything “To and From” that identified phone number for the specific date. Calls, texts, contacts etc. Including results for the inbound and outbound contacts.

♦ FISA-702(17) is a search of the system returning a U.S. person (702); and the “17” is a check box to initiate a search based on everything “About” the search qualifier. Example, if you put a date and a phone number and check “17” as the search parameter the user will get the returns of everything about that phone. Calls, texts, contacts, geolocation (or gps results), account information, user, service provider etc. As a result, 702(17) can actually be used to locate where the phone (and user) was located on a specific date or sequentially over a specific period of time which is simply a matter of changing the date parameters.

And that’s just from a phone number.

Search an ip address “about” and read all data into that server; put in an email address and gain everything about that account. Or use the electronic address of a GPS enabled vehicle (about) and you can withdraw more electronic data and monitor in real time. Search a credit card number and get everything about the account including what was purchased, where, when, etc. Search a bank account number, get everything about transactions and electronic records etc. Just about anything and everything can be electronically searched; everything has an electronic ‘identifier’.

The search parameter is only limited by the originating field filled out. Names, places, numbers, addresses, etc. By using the “About” parameter there may be thousands or millions of returns. Imagine if you put “@realdonaldtrump” into the search parameter? You could extract all following accounts who interacted on Twitter, or Facebook etc. You are only limited by your imagination and the scale of the electronic connectivity.

As you can see below, on March 9th, 2016, internal auditors noted the FBI was sharing “raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information”.

In plain English the raw search returns were being shared with unknown entities without any attempt to “minimize” or redact the results. The person(s) attached to the results were named and obvious. There was no effort to hide their identity or protect their 4th amendment rights of privacy; and database access was from the FBI network:

But what’s the scale here? This is where the story really lies.

Read this next excerpt carefully.

The operators were searching “U.S Persons”. The review of November 1, 2015, to May 1, 2016, showed “eighty-five percent of those queries” were unlawful or “non compliant”.

85% !! “representing [redacted number]”.

We can tell from the space of the redaction the number of searches were between 10,000 and 99,999 [six digits]. If we take the middle number of 50,000 – a non compliant rate of 85 percent means 42,500 unlawful searches out of 50,000.

The [six digit] amount (more than 10,000, less than 99,999), and 85% error rate, was captured in a six month period, November 2015 to April 2016.

Also notice this very important quote: “many of these non-compliant queries involved the use of the same identifiers over different date ranges.” This tells us the system users were searching the same phone number, email address, electronic identifier, repeatedly over different dates.

Specific person(s) were being tracked/monitored.

Additionally, notice the last quote: “while the government reports it is unable to provide a reliable estimate of” these non lawful searches “since 2012, there is no apparent reason to believe the November 2015 [to] April 2016 coincided with an unusually high error rate”.

That means the 85% unlawful FISA-702(16)(17) database abuse has likely been happening since 2012.

2012 is an important date in this database abuse because a network of specific interests is assembled that also shows up in 2016/2017:

• Who was 2012 FBI Director? Robert Mueller, who was selected by the FBI group to become special prosecutor in 2017.

• Who was Mueller’ chief-of-staff? Aaron Zebley, who became one of the lead lawyers on the Mueller special counsel.

• Who was 2012 CIA Director? John Brennan (remember the ouster of Gen Petraeus)

• Who was ODNI? James Clapper.

• Remember, the NSA is inside the Pentagon (Defense Dept) command structure. Who was Defense Secretary? Ash Carter

Who wanted NSA Director Mike Rogers fired in 2016? Brennan, Clapper and Carter.

And finally, who wrote and signed-off-on the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment and then lied about the use of the Steele Dossier? The same John Brennan, and James Clapper along with James Comey.

Tens of thousands of searches over four years (since 2012), and 85% of them are illegal. The results were extracted for?…. (I believe this is all political opposition use; and I’ll explain why momentarily.)

OK, that’s the stunning scale; but who was involved?

Private contractors with access to “raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to FBI’s requests“:

And as noted, the contractor access was finally halted on April 18th, 2016.

[Coincidentally (or likely not), the wife of Fusion-GPS founder Glenn Simpson, Mary Jacoby, goes to the White House the very next day on April 19th, 2016.]

None of this is conspiracy theory.

All of this is laid out inside this 99-page opinion from FISC Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer who also noted that none of this FISA abuse was accidental in a footnote on page 87: “deliberate decisionmaking“:

This specific footnote, if declassified, could be a key. Note the phrase: “([redacted] access to FBI systems was the subject of an interagency memorandum of understanding entered into [redacted])”, this sentence has the potential to expose an internal decision; withheld from congress and the FISA court by the Obama administration; that outlines a process for access and distribution of surveillance data.

Note: “no notice of this practice was given to the FISC until 2016“, that is important.

Summary: 

The FISA court identified and quantified tens-of-thousands of search queries of the NSA/FBI database using the FISA-702(16)(17) system. The database was repeatedly used by persons with contractor access who unlawfully searched and extracted the raw results without redacting the information and shared it with an unknown number of entities.

The outlined process certainly points toward a political spying and surveillance operation; and we are not the only one to think that’s what this system is being used for.

Back in 2017 when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes was working to reauthorize the FISA legislation, Nunes wrote a letter to ODNI Dan Coats about this specific issue:

SIDEBAR:

To solve the issue, well, actually attempt to ensure it never happened again, NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers eventually took away the “About” query option permanently in 2017. NSA Director Rogers said the abuse was so inherent there was no way to stop it except to remove the process completely. [SEE HERE] Additionally, the NSA database operates as a function of the Pentagon, so the Trump administration went one step further. On his last day as NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers -together with ODNI Dan Coats- put U.S. cyber-command, the database steward, fully into the U.S. military as a full combatant command. [SEE HERE] Unfortunately it didn’t work as shown by the 2018 FISC opinion rendered by FISC Judge James Boasberg [SEE HERE]

There is little doubt the FISA-702(16)(17) database system was used by Obama-era officials, from 2012 through April 2016, as a way to spy on their political opposition.

Quite simply there is no other intellectually honest explanation for the scale and volume of database abuse that was taking place; and keep in mind these searches were all ruled to be unlawful. Searches for repeated persons over a period time that were not authorized.

When we reconcile what was taking place and who was involved, then the actions of the exact same principle participants take on a jaw-dropping amount of clarity.

All of the action taken by CIA Director Brennan, FBI Director Comey, ODNI Clapper and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter make sense. Including their effort to get NSA Director Mike Rogers fired.

Everything after March 9th, 2016, had a dual purpose: (1) done to cover up the weaponization of the FISA database. [Explained Here] Spygate, Russia-Gate, the Steele Dossier, and even the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (drawn from the dossier and signed by the above) were needed to create a cover-story and protect themselves from discovery of this four year weaponization, political surveillance and unlawful spying. Even the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel makes sense; he was FBI Director when this began. And (2) they needed to keep the surveillance going.

The beginning decision to use FISA(702) as a domestic surveillance and political spy mechanism appears to have started in/around 2012. Perhaps sometime shortly before the 2012 presidential election and before John Brennan left the White House and moved to CIA. However, there was an earlier version of data assembly that preceded this effort.

Political spying 1.0 was actually the weaponization of the IRS. This is where the term “Secret Research Project” originated as a description from the Obama team. It involved the U.S. Department of Justice under Eric Holder and the FBI under Robert Mueller. It never made sense why Eric Holder requested over 1 million tax records via CD ROM, until overlaying the timeline of the FISA abuse:

The IRS sent the FBI “21 disks constituting a 1.1 million page database of information from 501(c)(4) tax exempt organizations, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The transaction occurred in October 2010 (link)

Why disks? Why send a stack of DISKS to the DOJ and FBI when there’s a pre-existing financial crimes unit within the IRS. All of the evidence within this sketchy operation came directly to the surface in early spring 2012.

The IRS scandal was never really about the IRS, it was always about the DOJ asking the IRS for the database of information. That is why it was transparently a conflict when the same DOJ was tasked with investigating the DOJ/IRS scandal. Additionally, Obama sent his chief-of-staff Jack Lew to become Treasury Secretary; effectively placing an ally to oversee/cover-up any issues. As Treasury Secretary Lew did just that.

Lesson Learned – It would appear the Obama administration learned a lesson from attempting to gather a large opposition research database operation inside a functioning organization large enough to have some good people that might blow the whistle.

The timeline reflects a few months after realizing the “Secret Research Project” was now worthless (June 2012), they focused more deliberately on a smaller network within the intelligence apparatus and began weaponizing the FBI/NSA database. If our hunch is correct, that is what will be visible in footnote #69:

How this all comes together in 2019/2020

Fusion GPS was not hired in April 2016 just to research Donald Trump. As shown in the evidence provided by the FISC, the intelligence community was already doing surveillance and spy operations. The Obama administration already knew everything about the Trump campaign, and were monitoring everything by exploiting the FISA database.

However, after the NSA alerts in/around March 9th, 2016, and particularly after the April 18th shutdown of contractor access, the Obama intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to create a legal albeit ex post facto justification for the pre-existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion GPS gave them that justification in the Steele Dossier.

That’s why the FBI small group, which later transitioned into the Mueller team, were so strongly committed to and defending the formation of the Steele Dossier and its dubious content.

The Steele Dossier, an outcome of the Fusion contract, contains three insurance policy purposes: (1) the cover-story and justification for the pre-existing surveillance operation (protect Obama); and (2) facilitate the FBI counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign (assist Clinton); and (3) continue the operation with a special counsel (protect both).

An insurance policy would be needed. The Steele Dossier becomes the investigative virus the FBI wanted inside the system. To get the virus into official status, they used the FISA application as the delivery method and injected it into Carter Page. The FBI already knew Carter Page; essentially Carter Page was irrelevant, what they needed was the FISA warrant and the Dossier in the system {Go Deep}.

The Obama intelligence community needed Fusion GPS to give them a plausible justification for already existing surveillance and spy operations. Fusion-GPS gave them that justification and evidence for a FISA warrant with the Steele Dossier.

Ultimately that’s why the Steele Dossier was so important; without it, the FBI would not have a tool that Mueller needed to continue the investigation of President Trump. In essence by renewing the FISA application, despite them knowing the underlying dossier was junk, the FBI was keeping the surveillance gateway open for Team Mueller to exploit later on.

Additionally, without the Steele Dossier the DOJ and FBI are naked with their FISA-702 abuse as outlined by John Ratcliffe.

Thankfully we know U.S. Attorney John Durham has talked to NSA Director Mike Rogers. In this video Rogers explains how he was notified of what was happening and what he did after the notification.

* * *

After tonight’s tweets from President Trump, we should expect a full-court press from ‘the resistance’ to distract from the cracks appearing in the former President’s halo of invincibility…

Dozens of striking New Orleans garbagemen who are demanding hazard pay and paid sick leave due to the coronavirus have been replaced by inmates from a nearby prison, according to Payday Report. The workers were employed by the temp service People Ready, which contracts with New Orleans Metro Disposal.

“$10.25 to pick up trash – come on now. It’s contaminated now with coronavirus,” strike leader Gregory Woods told the outlet.

Instead of meeting their demands, which include proper safety equipment, $15 an hour, and fixing broken trucks, the city is using workers from the prison in nearby Livingston Parish.

“Metro Services Group has long been an advocate of helping persons who had been incarcerated return to society in a meaningful and productive way,” said the city’s sanitation services in a statement. “Metro makes no apologies for this policy as a core element of our commitment to being good corporate citizens.”

Under state rules, prison inmates, employed by Metro Services, will be paid only 13% of what garbage workers, who only make $10.25-an-hour, are being paid.

“I really don’t like it,” says Woods. “They are really trying to use those dudes to do our job, and they paying them way less than they were paying us.”

“They are trying to show the world that people will still do our job without giving us the proper protective equipment,” says Woods. “All of it is a hustle for them, a scam for them. They saving money that’s all they are doing – that’s all it is”. –Payday Report

“We need them to provide us with the proper PPE — to all the workers immediately and consistently and on a daily basis,” said fired worker Jonathan Edward, who added “Provide us with our hazardous pay due to the pandemic of COVID-19.”

Sanitation workers in New Orleans were fired bc they were on strike to get proper PPE, $15 an hour, and sick leave. Metro Service Group has replaced them with prison labor they pay $1.20 an hour. This should make you outraged. pic.twitter.com/ogrxRGYcQ5

— the movement continues (@sumthingnew12) May 11, 2020

Worker Harold Peters says he wants his job back if they can reach an agreement.

“We’re out here. We’re doing our job. We take pride in our work,” he said, adding “Actually, we can’t wait to get back to work. We just want to be compensated.”

Authored by Lillianna Byington of FoodDive,

Summary:

• A U.S. Agriculture Department spokesperson told Food Dive that 197 field employees in the Food Safety and Inspection Service ​are absent from work after testing positive for coronavirus and 120 FSIS employees are under self-quarantine due to contact with or exposure to COVID-1​9 as of May 5.

• The American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing 6,500 federal food inspectors, said three inspectors have died in Illinois, Mississippi and New York, Meat and Poultry reported. 

• “FSIS has taken the unprecedented step of protecting its employees by allowing those inspectors in high-risk health categories to self-certify with their supervisor and excusing them from inspection duties until the risk from COVID-19 decreases or is mitigated,” the spokesperson told Food Dive. “Additionally, FSIS now has enough masks and face coverings on hand to keep our inspection personnel supplied for the next few months. Despite these numbers our dedicated personnel are still meeting all of their inspection responsibilities so that consumers can continue to enjoy a safe supply of meat and poultry products.”

As coronavirus has spread rapidly among meat plants across the country, it’s not just the workers that are getting infected. Many people have strongly criticized the industry’s response for waiting too long to implement safety precautions and close processing plants as thousands have tested positive for coronavirus and at least 20 workers have died. But the inspectors checking these facilities and their products are not immune to the virus either. 

FSIS inspectors are classified as essential workers, so they have continued to travel to monitor these facilities. But as the plants become coronavirus hot spots, reports have shown the inspectors haven’t been able to protect themselves adequately. 

A FSIS inspector interviewed in Government Executive said moving inspectors exposed to an outbreak at one plant to another location isn’t safe because they could then be coronavirus carriers and further the spread.

Last month, Politico reported many of the inspectors were expected to find their own protective gear since USDA wasn’t able to secure face masks for all of its workers. In April, USDA said it would give a $50 reimbursement for inspectors to find their own, according to Politico. But now the department says it has enough masks.

Since more than 300 inspectors have either tested positive or self quarantined, that can make it challenging to inspect every plant. Recent closures, however, could make that easier. More than 20 meatpacking plants, including facilities run by Tyson Foods, JBS USA, Smithfield Foods and Cargill​, have closed temporarily or indefinitely following pressure from local authorities and their own workforce. But as plants start to reopen, the smaller FSIS workforce could weigh on meat processors. 

Two weeks ago, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring meat plants as “critical infrastructure” using the Defense Production Act to keep these facilities open and help prevent shortages. But as plants reopen, inspectors will need to travel to them and there is still risk of the virus continuing to spread.

The new executive order puts USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue in charge of coordinating with companies to reopen or continue operations during the pandemic. Perdue previously said he anticipated plants would reopen in “days not weeks.” Already, a major beef and pork plant for Tyson reopened with limited production last week after nearly 900 of its workers tested positive. A Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where hundreds contracted the virus, also reopened with limited staff last week. 

Several labor groups have criticized the USDA, asking if it can’t protect its own employees from the virus, how can it protect workers? ​”The health and safety of federal inspectors and plant workers is in the hands of an industry that the administration is now pressuring to stay open, no matter the costs,” Paula Schelling, acting president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 45, which represents 6,500 federal food inspectors, said in a release. 

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Occupational Safety and Health Administration created guidelines calling for distancing and other safety measures, there are no requirements forcing companies to reconfigure facilities. And if inspectors continue to catch the virus traveling from plant to plant, they could risk spreading it themselves, or if even more get sick, then there may not be enough inspectors to properly check each facility. It’s just the latest hurdle to challenge the meat industry hit hard during the recent pandemic.

A startup in New York must be closely watching the response efforts seen in Asia and Europe because any country decimated by the virus tends to deploy an army of robot drones with sprayer devices to disinfect public areas. These drones have been seen in China, South Korea, Italy, Spain, Germany, and will be shortly coming to the US. 

Syracuse-based EagleHawk One, Inc. has joined the battle against coronavirus and mounted a sprayer device on one of its drones to disinfectant stadiums, a move the company believes could support efforts in reopening America. 

“As a team, we just kind of took a step back and said, ‘How can we help be part of the solution going forward with COVID-19,'” CEO Patrick Walsh told local newspaper Syracuse, indicating that his company has been gearing up in the last several months to fight the virus with technology. 

Walsh’s drones are a variant of the ones seen overseas. In China, many of the drones we observed had sprayer devices completely contained underneath the belly of the drone, with a 5-8 gallon container of disinfectant. EagleHawk One’s have the disinfectant stored on the ground and is pumped to the drone through a hose. A second drone flies near the disinfecting drone to hold the hose and prevent it from getting tangled on seats or other objects.

Walsh said the disinfecting drone could cover a large stadium, outdoor public area, and or other indoor facilities. He said his company is trying to market the system to colleges, sports teams, and minor leagues so they can safely reopen facilities. 

“We’re getting strong interest now, but I think everybody’s in a waiting game, unfortunately,” he said.

The company has tested the disinfecting system at several stadiums, including KeyBank Center in Buffalo, Sahlen Field in Buffalo, and Oncenter War Memorial Arena in Syracuse. 

Walsh said using drones to disinfect thousands of seats is a much better solution than employing dozens of workers on the ground — this is cost-cutting and time-savings, he added. 

“Say you have a hockey game at the War Memorial,” he said. “We would come out that evening or the next morning, do the cleaning and have it ready to go for the next day,” he said.

He also said spraying with drones is much safer than having workers manually disinfect each seat.  

“Now, people won’t be directly exposed,” said Walsh. “The drone will do the job.”

Watch EagleHawk operate the drone at the Oncenter War Memorial Arena: 

And with Major League Baseball owners proposing to start games in July – EagleHawk One’s drones could be the perfect solution to reopen stadiums. After all, life is boring as hell without sports. 

Having threatened last week that “COVID reparation” would be paid one way or another – and following Peter Navarro’s comments echoing the same rhetoric this morning – FOX Business reports that President Trump is moving ahead with his plans to block a government retirement fund from investing in Chinese equities considered a national security risk.

As we detailed previously, Trump made his initial threats from the Rose Garden at the White House two weeks ago after he was pressed by a reporter over a German newspaper report suggesting that China should be issued a $160 billion invoice for the impact on Europe’s economy.

Since then plans have been strawman’d, escalating up to last Wednesday’s threat that the Trump admin is planning an executive order to block a 2017 decision that The Thrift Savings Plan, the federal government’s retirement savings fund, would transfer a massive $50 billion to an international fund which would mirror the MSCI All-Country World Index.

The issue being China’s addition to the index, and thus the fund being forced to allocate significant capital to the Chinese stock markets, at a time when the gloves between the two nations are clearly off.

In one letter written Monday, obtained exclusively by FOX Business,  national security adviser Robert O’Brien and National Economic Council Chair Larry Kudlow write to U.S. Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia stating that the White House does not want the Thrift Savings Plan, which is a federal employee retirement fund, to have money invested in Chinese equities.

Specifically, the letter directly links China’s handling of COVID-19 as one of several reasons why investment in Chinese companies should not occur.

It says the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board is “Departing from the Board’s established index for the International Stock Investment Fund (I Fund) to track one that maintains Chinese equities is risky and unjustified.”

In a second letter, FOX Business reports that Scalia writes to Michael Kennedy, the chairman of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, sharing the Kudlow/O’Brien letter noting the two have “grave concerns with the planned investment on grounds of both investment risk and national security.”

460987415 Sec Scalia to Cha… by Zerohedge on Scribd

The letter concludes by saying that moving the assets out of a certain fund is “at the direction of President Trump.”

Needless to say, the optics of the US halting capital from entering China would be staggering and could result in a reversion of China-bound capital flows across all Western countries until the current war of words between Trump and Xi rages.

The main reaction so far is a drop in US equity futures…

And some weakness in yuan…

The only problem is that this particular war of words could last a long time, since there is no longer any impetus to kiss and make up, and if anything, Trump will only escalate the anti-China sentiment into the election (and after), to keep pounding that the collapse resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic is not his fault, but rather Beijing’s, even as China pursues a mirror image approach, blaming the US for launching the pandemic (and perhaps as we saw tonight, taking its retaliation against US allies like Australia).

Additionally, Trump knows The Fed will defend his stock market (he does not need a ‘trade deal’ to levitate it) into the election, giving him leverage in any war of words (or deeds) against China.

Heading into today’s Chinese inflation print, the bond market was sending a mixed message: while consensus expected that China’s economy would be hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, the yield on China’s government bonds climbed to the highest level in nearly two months, suggesting either the worst from the deflationary drag was now behind China, or was the result of expectations for a large supply increase later this month.

In retrospect, it was the former, because moments ago China’s NBS reported that in April, CPI rose just 3.3%, sliding 1% from March and not only a huge miss to consensus of 3.7%, but missing the lowest estimate (the range was 3.4% to 4.3%). This was the lowest print since September 2019 when China was suffering from an acute surge in food prices driven by pork hyperinflation (the result of another virus).

The bulk of the miss was due to a drop in food inflation, which dropped from 18.3%YoY to 14.8% vs March (a -3%MoM decline), with pork prices falling 7.6% as supply continues to come to market just as demand is fleeing said market. There was also weakness in transportation and recreation segments, reflecting subdued activity despite China’s bombastic reopening.

Meanwhile, factory gate prices, or Producer Price Inflation a proxy for corporate profits, plunged deeper into the red, sliding to -3.1%, more than double the March decline of -1.5%, missing consensus estimate of a -2.5% drop, and the lowest print since April 2016.

And since PPI is a close proxy for industrial profits which as discussed recently are in freefall, it is very likely that we will witness a record low PPI print as soon as next month.

And while China’s accelerating disinflation is bad news not only for the country but also the entire world, as China was critical during the last financial crisis do unleash a global reflationary wave across the globe, the fact that China is also succumbing to lower prices has very adverse consequences for global growth.

There is a silver lining: as we wrote earlier today when looking at China’s credit creation, the elevated CPI inflation in recent months had been an unfavorable factor for monetary policy (even though it has largely been due to virus shock impacts such as supply shock to food). However, as the PBOC noted over the weekend in its quarterly monetary policy report – in which it reaffirmed its expansionary stance by promising stronger monetary policy action ahead – CPI inflation has started to go downward, and inflation expectations are currently stable.

As a result, with inflation now sliding fast the biggest hurdle before the PBOC for a wholesale rate cut is now gone, and instead of using a targeted approach to injecting liquidity in the system via new yuan loans, local bond issuance and the occasional RRR cut, the central bank will very soon enter the comfort zone where it too follows the rest of the world in cutting rates sharply lower in hopes of stimulating the economy.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

For a long time I warned that our economic bubble would burst and that we would plunge into a nightmarish economic collapse.  Now it has happened, and it turns out that fear of COVID-19 was the “black swan event” that triggered the collapse.  The ironic thing is that COVID-19 is not even close to the worst thing that is going to happen to us.  But it was more than enough to topple our incredibly fragile economic system, and now tens of millions of Americans are deeply suffering.  On Friday, the April jobs report was released, and it was the worst jobs report in U.S. history by a very, very wide margin.  According to the official numbers, 20.5 million Americans lost their jobs during the month, and the unemployment rate shot up to 14.7 percent.  During the last recession, the unemployment rate peaked at about 10 percent, and we have already left that number in the dust. 

The figures that we are seeing now are truly, truly horrifying, and what is even more frightening is that they aren’t even that accurate.

But don’t take my word for it.

On Friday, the U.S. Labor Department publicly admitted that the true unemployment rate in April was closer to 20 percent…

Millions of U.S. residents were counted as employed in April despite having no job, suggesting April’s true unemployment rate was closer to 20%, much higher than the official 14.7% reported, the Labor Department said Friday.

The jobless rate should have included people on temporary unpaid leave, furloughed because of the coronavirus pandemic, the government said.

I applaud the Labor Department for trying to be honest.  In the report, they openly admitted that an “additional 7.5 million workers” should have been classified as unemployed…

But responses to the survey by which the data was collected show 11.5 million people were categorized as employed but absent from work because of vacation, parental leave or other reasons, but including 8.1 million absent for “unspecified” reasons, a group that usually numbers about 620,000.

“One assumption might be that these additional 7.5 million workers …should have been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff,” a note attached to the government’s jobs report Friday said.

If those workers had been correctly classified, the official unemployment rate would have been about 19.5 percent, and that would have put us solidly in Great Depression territory.

But others have looked at the numbers and calculated that the true rate of unemployment should be even higher than that.

For example, Standard Chartered has calculated that the true rate of unemployment could be as high as 27.5 percent…

While it is true that what the BLS reported that the April unemployment rate (UR) was less than expected (14.7% versus consensus of 16.0%) and the drop in payroll employment of 20.5 million was also less than the 22.0 million expected, Standard Chartered bank has calculated that adjustments to the headline unemployment rate push the effective number of unemployed to 42 million and the effective UR rate to 25.5%, higher even than the U-6 underemployment rate of 22.8%. Worse, if one treats underemployed in line with the U-6 methodology, the true April unemployment number would rise to an mindblowing 27.5%.

So how did Standard Chartered arrive at those numbers?  The following is how Zero Hedge explained it…

How does one get these numbers? As the bank’s chief FX strategist Steve Englander explains, start with the 23.1 million unemployed as published by BLS. To this add 8.1mn people who have dropped out of the labor force since February (previously the labor force had been growing steadily, so these are likely unemployed).

Add back 7.5MM workers classified as ‘employed but not at work for other reasons’ – BLS states that these workers are likely misclassified as employed, when they are in fact unemployed. Involuntary part-time work for economic reasons has gone up by 6.6MM and we treat these as half-unemployed (i.e., a contribution of 3.3MM).

This totals almost 42 Million effectively unemployed.

And Standard Chartered is not the only one that has come up with such a high figure.

In fact, John Williams of shadowstats.com says that if honest numbers were being used that the U.S. unemployment rate would now be an eye-popping 35.4 percent.

Wow.

Of course everyone admits that things are really, really bad and that the numbers for next month are likely to be even worse.

If you can believe it, even White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett is admitting that the official unemployment rate is likely to surge above 20 percent in “May or June”…

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett believes the unemployment rate could rise above 20% and the worst job losses would come in “May or June” because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

When asked Sunday what the “bottom” of the country’s unemployment pain would be, Hassett, who advises the Trump administration on economic policy and is the former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, told CBS’s “Face the Nation,” “to get unemployment rates like the ones that we’re about to see … which I think will climb up toward 20% by next month, you have to really go back to the Great Depression to see that.”

And even once this pandemic fades, many of those jobs won’t be coming back.

Initially, many employers had anticipated that they would be bringing all of their employees back following a short, severe crisis.  But at this point reality is beginning to set in for many of them.

For example, a restaurant owner in Kentucky named Britney Ruby Miller has had to lower her expectations as this pandemic has dragged on…

In late March, Britney Ruby Miller, co-owner of a small chain of steakhouse restaurants, confidently proclaimed that once the viral outbreak had subsided, her company planned to recall all its laid-off workers.

Now? Miller would be thrilled to restore, by year’s end, three-quarters of the roughly 600 workers her company had to let go.

Yes, the state of Kentucky is starting to “reopen for business”, but for now her restaurants will “be limited to 33% of capacity” and there will be all sorts of other new expenses that Miller will be forced to deal with…

Yet business won’t be returning to what it was before. In Kentucky, the restaurants will be limited to 33% of capacity. They are putting six feet between tables in all their restaurants, thereby limiting seating. Miller estimates that the company’s revenue will plunge by half to three-quarters this year.

And expenses are rising because the company must buy face masks and other equipment for the workers it does recall and restock its food, drink, and equipment supplies.

There are very, very few restaurants that can be profitable under such circumstances.

Unless the state of Kentucky lifts those ridiculous restrictions, Miller may soon lose all of her restaurants and all of her employees may soon be permanently out of jobs.

Of course more layoff announcements just keep rolling in from all over America with each passing day.  The following examples come from the Wall Street Journal…

This past week, General Electric Co., Uber Technologies Inc. UBER 6.01% and Airbnb Inc. said they would lay off thousands of workers. MGM Resorts International MGM 4.42% warned that some of the 63,000 employees it has furloughed may be let go permanently starting in August. Aerospace supplier Raytheon Technologies Corp., RTX 2.91%  job-listings site Glassdoor and United Airlines Holdings Inc. UAL 11.74% also said in the past week that they had reduced jobs or planned to do so.

This is what an economic depression looks like, and it is going to be so incredibly painful.

And it is critical to understand that what we have experienced so far is just a warm-up act for the next chapters.

If you remember how bitter the last recession was, that should motivate you to take action to prepare for what is ahead, because this economic downturn is already even worse.

Yes, the months in front of us will be exceptionally challenging, but you can get through this.  Things may look really bleak, but for now you just need to keep hanging in there.

There will be life on the other side, but your future may end up looking far different than you originally anticipated.

Even as San Francisco ushers its homeless population into ritzy hotels (at city expense), the city’s streets – particularly in districts like the Tenderloin – have seen a growing number of tents pitched by the homeless. And according to a lawsuit filed by law schools and the business community, the number of tents pitched by homeless in the district has climbed 300% since the coronavirus outbreak began.

We first reported on San Francisco’s latest genius policy idea – simultaneously wasting city money and burnishing its reputation for extravagant handouts to the homeless – more than a month ago, when the city first announced plans to place up to 3,000 homeless in hotels.

The lawsuit, which was filed by residents, businesses and the University of California Hastings College of Law, is pushing the city to clean up drug needles, human waste and liter in the streets.

But the demands also call for more sensible policies to be enacted to ensure that assistance can be provided for individuals living in sidewalk tents, arguing they are at an increased risk of contracting COVID-19. About 400 tents currently occupy the neighborhood as San Francisco has had 1,943 confirmed cases of the coronavirus. The virus has killed at least 34 people in the city.

Before rose-emoji Democratic socialists rush to slam these residents of the Tenderloin for acting like a bunch of rich liberal “NIMBYS” it’s worth hearing them out.

David Faigman, chancellor and dean at UC Hastings, which is heading the case in federal court, says the suit was filed because ‘our neighborhood has become a pandemic containment zone,’ reports Fox News.

“The city has basically cordoned off our area. Tents are blocking the streets. Tents are blocking doorways. There are needles in the streets. There’s open-air drug dealing” Faigman said.

The Tenderloin is home to more children, elderly persons and vulnerable populations per capita than any other neighborhood in the city.

Faigman adds that those populations are not being protected due to a lack of public COVID-19 testing.

He says residents fear the “virus is raging in the neighborhood.”

“There’s no other neighborhood in San Francisco that would tolerate that, and they would stand up and be counted. Tenderloin needs to stand up and be counted,” Faigman said.

Of course, if the city simply decides to settle this lawsuit by moving more homeless people from the neighborhood into ritzy hotels – where they are also sometimes supplied with drugs and alcohol  – it would fully cement the following theory.

We present: How to get a free hotel room in San Francisco.

Step 1. Pitch a tent (preferably on a busy stretch of sidewalk).

Step 2. Harass the locals.

Step 3. Wait for the nice people from the city to take you to your new hotel suite home.

 

Authored by Ivan Pentchoukov via The Epoch Times,

The cybersecurity firm that investigated and remediated the alleged hack of the Democratic National Committee’s servers in 2016 found no direct evidence that hackers stole any data or emails, according to a newly declassified interview transcript.

Shawn Henry, the president of CrowdStrike Services, told the House Intelligence Committee in late 2017 that his firm had no evidence that the alleged Russian hackers stole any data from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers.

“There’s not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated,” Henry said.

“There’s circumstantial evidence, but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated.”

The publication by WikiLeaks of more than 44,000 emails from senior DNC officials became one of the biggest stories of the turbulent 2016 presidential race and served as the predicate for the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign. Special counsel Robert Mueller, who took over the probe in May 2017, eventually charged a group of Russians with hacking the DNC. The indictment alleges that the Russians hacked into the DNC and stole thousands of emails.

Prior to Mueller’s indictment, the public knowledge of the alleged DNC hack consisted of CrowdStrike’s brief report on the matter released on June 14, 2016, days after the firm claims to have ousted the hackers from the committee’s systems. The report makes no mention of stolen data, although Henry told The Washington Post in an article published the same day that the Russians allegedly “stole two files.”

Of the more than 44,000 emails published by WikiLeaks, more than 98 percent were sent and received by senior DNC officials between April 18 and May 25 of 2016. During more than half of that time frame, CrowdStrike had already installed its software on the DNC’s servers and was monitoring the network. The company did not respond to a request to explain how the emails were allegedly pilfered under its watch and why it failed to find evidence despite closely monitoring the servers with full awareness that hackers were present.

Mueller’s indictment alleges that Russian hackers broke into a DNC server and stole emails on or about May 25 and June 1 of 2016, roughly three weeks after CrowdStrike installed its software on the DNC servers and assessed that Russian hackers had gained access.

CrowdStrike’s involvement in the events surrounding the alleged DNC hack has long been the subject of controversy. Some facts about the firm’s involvement remain disputed by key players, including Henry, who told the House Intelligence Committee that he was not aware of the DNC or CrowdStrike denying any FBI requests related to the server hack. Henry’s testimony contradicted what then-FBI Director James Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee in January 2017. Comey told senators that the FBI sought and was repeatedly denied access to the physical DNC servers.

Henry was not the only one to contradict Comey. The DNC’s director of technology, Andrew Brown, told the House Intelligence Committee the DNC fully cooperated with every FBI request. The DNC’s IT director, Yared Tamene, told the committee the FBI never requested access to the physical servers. And Michael Sussman, the DNC’s outside counsel, told the committee that the FBI declined a DNC offer for full access to its servers.

According to Tamene, the DNC handed over images of its servers to CrowdStrike, which then handed them over to the FBI in May and June of 2016. Mueller’s final report on the Russia investigation cites these images, alongside redacted grand jury material, as the source for the allegation that Russian hackers stole the DNC emails.

According to a CrowdStrike report cited by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) the hackers allegedly “staged” a trove of DNC files for exfiltration on April 22. According to the Netyshko indictment, the hackers allegedly “compressed gigabytes of data from DNC computers, including opposition research” and “later moved the compressed DNC data” to a computer leased in Illinois. The indictment does not allege that the hackers moved the files from the Illinois system.

The charges in the Netyshko indictment remain alleged as the case is unlikely to be heard before a court since the defendants are in Russia. The government recently moved to drop the charges against an alleged Russian social media influence operation after the defendants mounted a defense in court.

The special counsel concluded his 22-month investigation last year finding insufficient evidence that anyone on the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election.

The DNC did not respond to a request for comment.

At the end of April, China sparked a diplomatic row after it threatened Australia with an economic hit if it doesn’t stop investigating the origins, and Beijing handling, of the coronavirus pandemic. As a reminder, Chinese Ambassador Cheng Jingye told Sky News that while China’s response may not have been “perfect,” Australia’s inquiry was “dangerous,” and could lead to Chinese consumers avoiding Chinese exports and travel.

“So what is being done by the Australia side?” asked Cheng. “The proposition is a kind of teaming up with those forces in Washington and to launch a kind of political campaign against China. The Chinese public is frustrated, dismayed and disappointed with what Australia is doing now,” Cheng warned Asutralia, adding that “in the long term… if the mood is going from bad to worse, people would think ‘Why should we go to such a country that is not so friendly to China?’ The tourists may have second thoughts.“

“The parents of the students would also think whether this place which they found is not so friendly, even hostile, whether this is the best place to send their kids here,” Cheng continued (via the Daily Wire). “It is up to the people to decide. Maybe the ordinary people will say ‘Why should we drink Australian wine? Eat Australian beef?’“

Australia’s Foreign Minister Marise Payne hit back saying “Australia has made a principled call for an independent review of the COVID-19 outbreak, an unprecedented global crisis with severe health, economic and social impacts.”

“We reject any suggestion that economic coercion is an appropriate response to a call for such an assessment, when what we need is global co-operation.”

And in confirmation, on the very same day, Australia’s Daily Telegraph reported that Western intelligence agencies are “looking closely at the work of a senior scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Peng Zhou,” as part of a joint international investigation into the origins of COVID-19. The Australian newspaper Australian newspaper reported that “the Five Eyes intelligence agencies of Australia, Canada, NZ, UK and US, are understood to be looking closely at the work of a senior scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Peng Zhou, as they examine whether COVID-19 originated from a wet market or whether the naturally-­occurring virus may have been released from the level four laboratory in Wuhan that was studying deadly coronavirus pathogens from bats.”

None of this went unnoticed by Beijing which, not used to having its threats ignored, has just escalated the trade war when it imposed an import ban on four Australian slaughterhouses, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports, adding that, as noted above, China’s trade barriers are “in retaliation to Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s demand for an independent investigation into the COVID 19 outbreak.”

The blacklisting of the beef plants – three in Queensland and one in NSW – came just days after China flagged plans to introduce an 80% tariff on Australian barley, bringing the trade to its knees.

Three Queensland meatworks — Kilcoy Pastoral Company, the JBS owned Beef City, near Toowoomba, Dinmore, near Brisbane, and the New South Wales’ Northern Cooperative Meat Company at Casino — have been suspended by China; together the four “meatworks represent 35% of beef exports to China, a trade that had been on track to reach $3.5 billion this year”, the ABC reported.

The news, which came around the time BOJ governor Kuroda said that the global economy was rapidly worsening, sent S&P futures down 0.5% to session lows…

… and slammed the Aussie which dropped 50 pips on the news.

In fact, risk is off broadly with the New Zealand dollar down more than 0.5% while the Mexican peso, the euro, the British pound and the Canadian dollar are all suffering. S&P 500 futures are down about 0.5%, while WTI crude pared its earlier advance. Risk havens such as Treasury futures are up 5 ticks, the yen is climbing and gold trimmed losses.

And now that China has acted on its threat to retaliate against countries seeking a probe into origin of the coronavirus, we wonder how long before officials realize that where there is smoke, there is likely a fire burning all the evidence. Speaking of which, the Wuhan Institute of Virology still hasn’t been burned down, but considering China’s adamant refusal to open up the facility to global inquiry and its openly punitive act against those who accuse Beijing of being behind the pandemic, it is clearly time for a full-blown inquiry just in case some WIV scientist has another accident, this time involving a flamethrower and a few hundred pounds of explosives.