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With the pace of economic growth slowing, a restive Hong Kong, a devastating pig ebola plague and a newly aggressive America looking to counter its ambitions on the world stage, Beijing is already struggling with its fair share of domestic and geopolitical issues. The last thing it needs is another quintessentially east-asian public health crisis. 

Headlines about a new pneumonia-like illness spreading through China have appeared in the Western press over the past week. Officials in the region, including in Hong Kong and Taiwan, have been fearful of the virus’s spread since Beijing delivered a notice warning about the virus on Dec. 31, when just 27 people were infected. As of Thursday, a little more than a week later, the number had risen to 59 – with seven in critical condition.

Now, it appears public health officials worst fears have been confirmed: Preliminary tests indicate the mysterious illness may be caused by a new coronavirus, according to lead scientist Xu Jianguo, who delivered the news to China’s official Xinhua news agency, according to the BBC.

Xu said he and his researchers found the “new type” of coronavirus by testing infected blood samples and throat swabs collected from 15 people.

Crucially, coronaviruses can be the cause of a wide range of illnesses, from common colds, to infections like the SARS virus that originated in China in 2002 and 2003 and ended up killing 700 people around the world. 

Courtesy of the BBC

Beijing’s confirmation seems to affirm the WHO’s suspicion that a coronavirus could be to blame for the outbreak.

While identifying the virus type is a start for authorities, “further investigations” are still necessary, said Gauden Galea, The WHO representative for China. For example, pathology investigators still need to understand how the virus spreads. 

So far, zero cases of human to human transmission have been confirmed, while the Wuhan cases are thought to have been caused through exposure to animals linked to a live seafood and animal market. Of note, no healthcare workers have fallen ill with the mystery virus.

Remember, the problem isn’t just that this virus is happening, it’s that it’s happening now, just before millions of Chinese travel to see family and friends during the Chinese New Year holiday. 

Three things are certain: death, taxes and quants suing other quants for stealing their secret, money-making algo sauce.

Ever since secretive quant giant Renaissance sued Millennium in the early 2000s for “expropriating” its quant trading strategies when it poached Russian quants Pavel Volfbeyn and Alexander Belopolsky, not a year passes without one or more high profile lawsuits gets lobbed between some of the most iconic HFT or quant funds. And 2020 is no different because as Bloomberg first reported, Citadel Securities, Ken Griffin’s market making firm, has sued a British hedge fund, GSA Capital, over its attempt to hire a senior Citadel trader amid allegations that GSA obtained “a secret trading strategy while using texts and Whatsapp messages to hide all traces of the plan.”

At the center of this lawsuit is what Bloomberg described as Citadel’s “ABC Strategy,” a closely-guarded automated trading strategy, i.e., algo, that cost Citadel “more than $100 million to develop” and which was generating more than $50 million a year trading stocks in the U.S. and Europe. And while there is little additional information, one can understand why an algo, especially one which appears to have involved “guaranteed” profits courtesy of high-frequency trading and consistently generated tens of millions in profits, would be a highly desired piece of source code for anyone to possess, especially an up and coming competitor that was seeking to “set up a new high-frequency trading business.”

Incidentally, for those unfamiliar with why HFT “market makers” are nothing short of money printers, look no further than Virtu, which as we reported back in 2015, had lost money on just one trading day in 6 years!

And yes, Citadel Securities, which is separate from Citadel’s hedge fund, is also wildly profitable: it made $3.5 billion in revenue in 2018, with profit margins that Ken Griffin has previously said should exceed 30%. The Citadel securities trading arm started as a high-frequency market-maker in options before pushing into equities (for those who say it is a very blurry line between prop and flow trading in HFT, you are absolutely right). Today, the firm dominates that realm, handling more than 1 of every 5 shares traded in the U.S., and has had a very close relationship with the likes of the millennials’ favorite trading platform, Robinhood Markets, which may also explain in part its profitability (and no, there is nothing wrong with payment for order flow – it is a decades-old practice that can be traced to the early years of electronic trading. In fact, it was pioneered by Bernie Madoff). For an extended profile of Citadel Securities, read the following Bloomberg profile.

In any case, that’s precisely the algo that GSA was going after when it set out to hire Citadel’s high-frequency trader, Vedat Cologlu, a 2007 Wharton grad and self-described “stat arb trader“, who helped operate and administer the models whose “returns were notably high given the low level of risk it took on.”

However, in its lawsuit, Citadel alleged that the UK fund wanted more:

GSA asked for sensitive information on his equity-trading including his profits and the speed of the trades. And then Cologlu handed over a plan that Citadel argues was based on its own confidential model, including the way the algorithm made predictions.

As noted above, the case which was filed last month, is the latest example of the lengths funds with proprietary trade secrets and automated strategies “where companies deploy computing power to identify trades promising the biggest mismatches or largest payoffs with the least amount of risk”, will go to protect their IP.

And in a world in which scalping dimes, nickels and pennies has become increasingly difficult now that virtually every HFT strategy has become commoditized (and cannibalized), the NYSE was forced to launch laser-based transmission towers to give the peasants using mere microwaves a leg up, it is perhaps not surprising that this latest case involves two market giants who would otherwise be able to coexist in any market but this one.

GSA was spun out of Deutsche Bank AG in 2005 and manages around $7.5 billion. Citadel Securities, the market making division of Citadel, of course needs no introduction. Citadel’s legal filing names GSA founder and majority owner Jonathan Hiscox as a defendant, alongside other officials including the chief technology officer. As Bloomberg notes, it has yet to file its formal defense, but said Wednesday it rejects the claims and plans to vigorously defend itself.

According to the Citadel complaint, GSA officials must have been aware of the need for secrecy because they regularly sought to keep details of the courtship out of emails where they could be easily discovered. In May 2019, GSA’s head of recruitment Douglas Ward emailed a junior employee saying that the job interview questions be “Kept off e-mail.”

“GSA well knew that Mr. Cologlu’s responses would contain or would be derived from Citadel’s confidential information and hoped to conceal their wrongful conduct,” Citadel’s lawyers said in the filing dated Dec. 16.

It’s not just stealing top secret money printing golden goose “algos” – trading firms and hedge funds, who have for long used fat pay checks to lure employees, have hit a wall when it comes to the top talent – especially in a market where the vast majority of hedge funds underperformed the market – and have been engaged in an intense battle to hire and retain talent. The latest front line is to recruit technologists who are seen as key to future-proof trading strategies.

As Bloomberg notes, Cologlu – who earned more than $700,000 in 2018 as a quant researcher – was looking for a move after 11 years at Citadel. The firm cited messages saying Cologlu was keen to build out his own business and believed there was a market to trade European stocks. GSA for its part dubbed the plan “Project High Speed Rail” and was making moves to enter the high-speed algorithmic trading business by joining the Turquoise trading facility run by the London Stock Exchange, according to the lawsuit.

Yet while quants and math PhDs may be brilliant at spotting patterns and correlations, they seem to lack even the most rudimentary common sense, and Cologlu sent Citadel’s trading plan to his work email account, which was promptly noticed by Citadel and an investigation began. The GSA recruiter speculated Cologlu had “been called out by Citadel.” That was indeed the case, and Cologlu confirmed to the Citadel legal team that he’d provided GSA with the trading strategy plan. It was unclear what happened next: according to the lawsuit, Cologlu has been suspended, but a person familiar with the situation said he has left the company.

At that point Citadel claims that it confronted GSA about its meetings with Cologlu, and an internal lawyer agreed to cooperate and shredded the hard copies of Cologlu’s trading plan. In addition to damages, Citadel is seeking an injunction to stop GSA from using any of its confidential information, and has also asked the judge to order GSA to destroy all paper and computer copies of the information.

Authored by Simon Watkins via OilPrice.com,

Following the political and popular backlash in Iran over details of its plans to make the Islamic Republic effectively a client state through various multi-layered oil and gas deals, China has switched its attention for the moment to Iran’s close ally and neighbour, Iraq. Like Iran, Iraq has enormous and still relatively underdeveloped oil and gas reserves, it is an irreplaceable geographical stepping stone in China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ programme, and it is in need of major ongoing funding. China already has leverage over Iraq as the leading oil company (Rosneft) of its close geopolitical ally, Russia, already has effective control over the oil and gas infrastructure of the north Iraq semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan, and Chinese companies operate on a number of fields in south Iraq. Last week saw key developments in China’s cornerstone project of making Iraq into a client state.

The first of these developments was the announcement from Iraq’s Finance Ministry that the country had started exporting 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil to China in October as part of the 20-year oil-for-infrastructure deal agreed between the two countries. As highlighted by OilPrice.com, the broad framework of this arrangement was agreed last September during a visit by Iraq’s then-Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi to Beijing, with the purpose of expanding China’s then US$20 billion of investment in Iraq in addition to the US$30 billion or so in annual trade between the two countries. According to last week’s statement, Chinese firms Zhenhua Oil and Sinochem were the importers of the Iraqi barrels involved, and OilPrice.com understands that all trade financing surrounding these exports – and many of those to come – have been done by the China Export and Credit Insurance Corporation.

This arrangement neatly rolls into China’s wider plan for Iraq (and Iran) as it aims to gradually increase its presence across the country, just as it has done in many countries in Africa in what has been regarded by many as a new wave of colonisation, as analysed in depth in my new book on the global oil markets. For Iraq and Iran, China’s plans are particularly far-reaching, OilPrice.com has been told by a senior oil industry figure who works closely with Iran’s Petroleum Ministry and Iraq’s Oil Ministry. China will begin with the oil and gas sector and work outwards from that central point. In addition to being granted huge reductions on buying Iranian oil and gas, China is to be given the opportunity to build factories in both Iran and Iraq – and build-out infrastructure, such as railways – overseen by its own management staff from Chinese companies. These are to have the same operational structure and assembly lines as those in China, so that they fit seamlessly into various Chinese companies’ assembly lines’ process for whatever product a particular company is manufacturing, whilst also being able to use the still-cheap labour available in both Iraq and Iraq.

The railway infrastructure in Iraq, such as it is, will be built out after the completion of the network in Iran by China, allowing for the transport of all manufactured products from China into, ultimately, Europe. In this context, late last year saw Iran’s Vice President, Eshaq Jahangiri announce that Iran had signed a contract with China to implement a project to electrify the main 900 kilometre railway connecting Tehran to the north-eastern city of Mashhad. Adjunct to this, Jahangiri added that there are also plans to establish a Tehran-Qom-Isfahan high-speed train line and to extend this upgraded network up to the north-west through Tabriz. Tabriz, home to a number of key sites relating to oil, gas, and petrochemicals, and the starting point for the Tabriz-Ankara gas pipeline, will be a pivot point of the 2,300 kilometre New Silk Road that links Urumqi (the capital of China’s western Xinjiang Province) to Tehran, and connecting Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan along the way, and then via Turkey into Europe. Once the plans for this are making substantial progress then China will extend the transport links into Iraq to the West.

In the meantime, Iraq has been working on new laws that will regulate the operation of a reconstruction agency, the primary function of which, according to the source, will be ensure that China “is allowed to just get on with things, without the usual red-tape.” Only recently, for example, Iraq’s Electricity Minister Louay al-Khateeb wrote:

“China is our primary option as a strategic partner in the long run…We started with a US$10 billion financial framework for a limited quantity of oil to finance some infrastructure projects…[but] Chinese funding tends to increase with the growing Iraqi oil production, [and is] to be used differently from the previous policies, through construction, investments and operationalization [sic] of the reconstruction council.”

The second key announcement in this vein made last week from Iraq was that the Oil Ministry has completed the pre-qualifying process for companies interested in participating in the Iraqi-Jordanian oil pipeline project. The U$5 billion pipeline is aimed at carrying oil produced from the Rumaila oilfield in Iraq’s Basra Governorate to the Jordanian port of Aqaba, with the first phase of the project comprising the installation of a 700-kilometre-long pipeline with a capacity of 2.25 million bpd within the Iraqi territories (Rumaila-Haditha). The second phase includes installing a 900-kilometre pipeline in Jordan between Haditha and Aqaba with a capacity of 1 million bpd. Iraq’s Oil Minister – for the time being, at least – Thamir Ghadhban added that the Ministry has formed a team to prepare legal contracts, address financial issues and oversee technical standards for implementing the project, and that May will be the final month in which offers for the project from the qualified companies will be accepted and that the winners will be announced before the end of this year. Around 150,000 barrels of the oil from Iraq would be used for Jordan’s domestic needs, whilst the remainder would be exported through Aqaba to various destinations, generating about US$3 billion a year in revenues to Jordan, with the rest going to Iraq. Given that the contractors will be expected to front-load all of the financing for the projects associated with this pipeline, Baghdad expects that such tender offers will be dominated by Chinese and Russian companies, according to the Iran and Iraq source.

“It will allow for infrastructural diversification for the China-Russia partnership that is now really gathering pace across the centre of the Middle East, to add to the plans we are seeing being put into place for Syria,” he told OilPrice.com last week.

Specifically, the entry of the hitherto virtually unknown Russian company, Stroytransgaz, into the hitherto equally unknown Block 17 of Iraq’s barren and lawless Anbar region recently:

“Is the absolute clear sign that the Iran-Iraq-Syria oil and gas pipelines system is now going ahead,” according to the Iran and Iraq source.

“This whole area is right in the centre of what the U.S. military used to call ‘the spine’ of Islamic State where the Euphrates flows westwards into Syria and eastwards into the Persian Gulf, extremely close to the border with Iran,” he said.

“Along the spine running from east to west are the historical ultra-nationalist and ultra-anti-West cities of Falluja, Ramadi, Hit and Haditha, and then we’re into Syria, and a short hop to the key strategic ports of Syria – Banias and Tartus – that also happen to be extremely important to the Russians,” he underlined. “With access to Jordan as well, China and Russia will have all of the key export and transport routes covered,” he concluded.

The American surveillance state just turned the Orwell dial to ’11’…

In the latest escalation in the war on Liberty and Freedom in the land of the free, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is beginning a pilot program this week to collect DNA at border entries.

By way of background, in August, a top government watchdog alerted President Trump and Congress that CBP, through a “disturbing” pattern of misconduct, has endangered the public for nearly a decade by failing to comply with a federal law requiring that the agency collect DNA samples from detained migrants.

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) said CBP’s “noncompliance with the law has allowed subjects subsequently accused of violent crimes, including homicide and sexual assault, to elude detection even when detained multiple times by CBP or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”

At the time, a DHS official told Fox News that the agency was now going to work closely with the DOJ on a “path forward” on DNA collection. 

And now it is about to begin.

According to a privacy document posted Monday on the DHS site, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in partnership with the FBI, will collect DNA samples, obtained via buccal cheek swab, from some migrants and U.S. citizens, which will then be stored in FBI files for use in criminal investigations around the country.

The program, effective January 6, 2020, CBP will begin collecting DNA from any person who is subject to fingerprinting – including U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and migrants (who are arrested at the border, already convicted of a crime, or facing criminal charges).

The statement adds that obtaining the DNA samples was “previously not feasible because of operational exigencies and resource limitations.”

The three-year pilot program will take place in the Detroit Sector and those who present at the Eagle Pass Port of Entry in southwest Texas.

Don’t want your privacy invaded? Too bad, failure to comply will be a misdemeanor.

As Bloomberg notes, privacy and oversight groups have expressed concern that the government has other, faster ways of verifying migrant identities that won’t create a massive database that could be used to target innocent individuals for surveillance.

Remember, it’s for your own security; and besides, if you have done nothing wrong, what have you got to fear from providing the government with your DNA?

As a reminder, DHS already expects to have face, fingerprint, and iris scans of at least 259 million people in its biometrics database by 2022.

The Orwellian police state is upon us, but don’t expect it to improve at all.  In fact, as George Orwell said: “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

Authored by Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner via Wirepoints.org,

If you’re wondering how widespread Illinois’ problems really are, check out the below chart based on U.S. Census data. It shows that 93 of the state’s 103 counties have shrunk since 2010. Illinois’ population has dropped by 170,000 people since the turn of the decade and few of the state’s counties have been spared.

Illinois has lost more population than any other state in the country and it was one of just four states to shrink since 2010. The other three states were West Virginia, Connecticut and Vermont. By comparison, states like Indiana added 200,000 to its population, while fast growing states like Tennessee and South Carolina added more than 400,000 each. Florida, Texas and California have added millions to their populations since 2010.

Illinois’ population loss across so many counties is a reflection of the state’s outlier status on many of the nation’s economic, demographic and financial metrics. Illinois has the nation’s most costly pension crisis, one of the highest tax burdens, falling real home prices and a general lack of economic opportunity. It’s also one of the most corrupt states in the country.

Cook County lost the most population of any county in Illinois over the 2010-2018 period. The county lost nearly 19,000 people. Winnebago was second with a loss of 11,000. St. Clair was third with a population drop of 9,300.

Macon, Peoria, Madison, Vermilion, LaSalle, Rock Island, and Kankakee counties rounded out the top ten biggest losers of population.

At the other end, only nine of the state’s 102 counties managed to gain population over the period. Kane County grew by 18,000, largely offsetting Cook County’s losses. Another collar county, Will, gained 13,500. Kendall County was next with an increase of 12,500.

The only other counties to show growth were DuPage, Champaign, McLean, Monroe, Grundy, Williamson – just nine counties in all.

The downstate problem

Collectively, Illinois’ downstate counties have suffered the worst loss of population, by far. The whole region lost nearly 120,000 people between 2010 and 2018 – more than 2.5 percent of its total population.

Three (DuPage, Will and Kane) of the five collar counties gained population, leaving the collar counties as the only growth area in Illinois.

However, that increase was largely at the expense of Cook County. Previous migration data shows many new collar residents come from Cook County.

Cook County itself lost 19,000, or 0.4 percent, of its total population over the 2010-2018. That’s on top of the more than 200,000 people it lost in the decade prior to that.

A 0.4 percent loss may not sound like much, but compared to the nation’s largest counties, Cook County is an outlier. Wirepoints analyzed the population change for the nation’s 50 most populous counties and found that Cook was one of just seven counties to lose population since 2010.

Think whatever you want about Illinois politics, but it’s being categorically rejected year after year by far too many residents. 

Until the state’s policies are flipped on their head – until Illinoisans finally get the big pension and spending reforms the state desperately needs – expect many more to uproot their lives to find opportunities elsewhere.

Read more about Illinois’s financial and out-migration crisis:

• New Census data shows Illinois lost population for the sixth year in a row

• Illinois’ demographic collapse: fewer immigrants, fewer babies and fleeing residents

• Leaving Illinois: Leaving Illinois: Does anybody care about people like us?

• Overpromising has crippled public pensions: A 50-state survey

• Why Warren Buffett is right to warn about Illinois: The state’s true retirement costs now total 50% of annual budget.

Tensions continued to climb in the Middle East Thursday evening as reports of another air strike have been confirmed, but this time, it was the Israelis doing the shelling.

According to reports by domestic and western media, the Israeli air force carried out an attack against an Iran-backed militia reportedly headquartered on the border between Syria and Iraq.

Tribal sources in Iraq apparently told reporters that the Israeli shelling targeted trucks and individuals associated with Iranian-backed militias near the Iraqi-Syria border. Artillery and shelling was also reported, though it’s unclear who fired those shots. The weapons are believed to have been destined for Hezbollah.

Sources claimed that the airstrikes were targeting weapons shipments, according to the Washington Post. The Kataib Imam Ali, an Iran-backed militia, was apparently moving weapons, possibly in preparation for a strike against US interests.

Al Mayadeen reported that the strikes targeted ballistic missile warehouses run by the group. The warehouse was situated outside of the city of Al Bukamal

Reports tonight of airstrikes in eastern Syria against a convoy of the Kataib Imam Ali, an Iranian backed Iraqi militia. Most likely by Israel, which regularly hits the area. A reminder that this isn’t just about the US & Iran

— Liz Sly (@LizSly) January 9, 2020

The attack comes just hours after Iranian officials, including President Rouhani and a top IRGC commander, warned that Iran’s retaliation for the killing of IRGC General Qasem Suleimani wasn’t yet over, and Tehran publicly washed its hands of its proxies, claiming it couldn’t be held responsible for actions committed in its name.

After being repeatedly ignored by presidents dating back to Ronald Reagan when it comes to the US’s ever-expanding military commitments around the globe, Congress finally decided to try and take some of that discretionary power back.

Using President Trump’s latest attack on Iranian interests as justification, Democratic leader and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi successfully passed a resolution that would force Trump to go to Congress for authorization before taking any further actions against Iran.

The vote in the Dem-controlled House was 224 to 194 in an almost entirely party-line vote. The vote has long been expected, and although a few Republican senators have decided to join Democrats in supporting the measure in the Senate, it’s still a few votes shy of passing, according to the latest vote totals circulating in the press.

Nancy Pelosi

By pressing ahead with her War Powers Resolution, Pelosi ignited a debate that many thought had been settled: For years, presidents have had authority to unilaterally authorize military action. Remember that time Barack Obama ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden? He didn’t need to go to Congress for that.

But by capitalizing on all the unfounded speculation about Trump starting WWIII, Pelosi sought to raise the issue, in an attempt to win a few Republican votes. Unfortunately for her, Republicans remained united in support of the president by equating support for Pelosi’s resolution with support for America’s enemies, according to the New York Times.

According to CNN, the resolution states that “when the United States military force, the American people and members of the United States Armed Forces deserve a credible explanation regarding such use of military force,” and also that “Congress has not authorized the President to use military force against Iran”

In considering it’s response, the Senate has a few options: it can move ahead with the House-passed measure or endorse a different version introduced by Sen. Tim Kaine.

Of course, without Republican in the upper chamber, the resolution is “largely symbolic” – just another Democratic attempt to poison public opinion against the president before election day.

Unfortunately for them, polls suggest that so far, this approach isn’t working.

A day after President Trump’s Wednesday Iran statements wherein he casually referenced — to the chagrin of the generals standing behind him (given it may have been classified) — that the Pentagon is advancing in its development of hypersonic weapons, Russia is busy testing some of its own hypersonic systems over the Black Sea. 

President Putin personally attended and oversaw military exercises near Crimea on Thursday, as Reuters reports, which crucially “included the launch of the hypersonic ‘Kinzhal’ missile, the TASS news agency reported”.

Putin  watched from the the Russian cruiser Marshal Ustinov the extensive drills involving maneuvers and weapon tests by Russia’s Black Sea and Northern Fleets. It reportedly involved over 40 aircraft, at least 30 ships and one submarine. 

Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy, Admiral Nikolai Yevmenov, declared the drills and weapons tests a “success” — including surface ship- submarine-launched Kalibr missiles — after which Putin ordered the formal end of the exercises. 

Most notably, however, the following via TASS is what’s raising eyebrows in the West:

During the drills, two Mig-31K fighters practiced target firing using the Kinzhal ballistic missile. 

The missiles were fired against and successfully hit land targets, according to separate international reports. 

The Kinzhal is one of six new advanced weapons under Russian Aerospace Forces development touted as ‘hypersonic’, meaning it can reach space and speeds of over Mach 10, with a claimed range of 2000km when launched from a MiG-31 and some 3,000 km if carried by a long-ranged bomber.

Though precise details of the program remain a closely guarded secret, it’s widely believed that elements of the Russian program may be far outpacing that of the Pentagon.

For example, Forbes recently reported that the Russian Navy is expected to be the first to deploy hypersonic cruise missiles on submarines. 

The timing of Russia’s Black Sea test of the Kinzhal nuclear-capable ballistic missile is interesting, again given Trump’s Wednesday speech.

“Our missiles are big, powerful, accurate, lethal, and fast,” Trump said in the speech addressing Iran’s ballistic missile ‘response’ to the killing of Gen. Qasem Soleimani. “Under construction are many hypersonic missiles.”

“The fact that we have this great military and equipment, however, does not mean we have to use it. We do not want to use it. American strength, both military and economic, is the best deterrent,” Trump continued.

But at a moment Russia continues to already be in ‘testing’ phase, though with some of those tests failing spectacularly and dangerously, it remains a mystery just how far along the US program is. 

Authored by Debra Heine via AMGreatness.com,

In a federal lawsuit filed this week, Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein has been implicated in yet another improper government spy operation.

In the new complaint, Attkisson v. Rosenstein et.al., investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson names former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosentein and four other Justice Department officials as the government agents who of illegally survielled her electronic devices.

According to the complaint – filed in United States District Court in Baltimore, Maryland – Rosenstein led “a multi-agency task force in Baltimore that conducted surveillance of the Attkissons’ computer systems” and “used USPS IP addresses on other occasions to conduct operations.”

The complaint states that all of the defendants “were agents and/or employees of the United States Government working with Rosenstein”  to conduct “the unlawful surveillance and hacking of the computer systems of the Plaintiffs.”

In June of 2017, Rosenstein signed off on the fourth and final application for the improper FISA warrant to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. A month earlier, he offered to wear a wire to spy on President Trump when he visited the Oval Office, although he later claimed that he was just joking.

Attkisson took to Twitter Thursday to explain in a video update about her case that she had just filed a new lawsuit in her years long fight “to hold the government agents accountable for the intrusions into my computer.”

In a comprehensive summary of the case at sharylattkisson.com, the reporter alleges that the intrusions began in 2011 while she was reporting at CBS on the massive government gunwalking scandal “Fast and Furious.” The government continued to spy on her computers while she was reporting on the Benghazi scandal.

Multiple forensic exams show that numerous electronic devices used by Attkisson and her family during this time frame were hacked or remotely compromised. Unauthorized parties used government Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to access Attkisson’s computers; placed government surveillance spyware on her devices; and illegally accessed her professional and personal information over an extended period of time.

The summary states that in March of 2019, an appellate panel of three judges determined the former Attorney General Eric Holder had immunity from Attkisson’s claims.

Two of the three judges ruled Attkisson’s claims should be dismissed because she took too long, three years— and without success—to determine the names of the “John Doe” federal agents involved in the intrusions of her computers.

A third judge rightly dissented, understanding that Attkisson consistently attempted to identify the John Does but the Department of Justice continuously blocked discovery, filed protective orders and filed motions to dismiss in an attempt to obstruct. The government did not turn over a single piece of paper in response to more than a dozen subpoenas.

The dissenting judge called the government’s actions “Kafkaesque” for obstructing Attkisson and then blaming her for “taking too long.”

“We have just filed a new complaint which I hope satisfies one of the issues a judge had that we’ve not been able to name the actual names of the government agents involved in the intrusion,” Attkison announced in her video. “Of course we argued we could not name the names because the government and courts would not permit us discovery to learn the names!”

She added: “We did some additional detective work. We have five names to present to the court—names based on our information that were directly involved in the surveillance of my computers. One of them is Rod Rosenstein, then U.S. Attorney in Baltimore, a former Department of Justice official.”

“Fmr. govt. agent admits illegally spying on Attkisson, implicates Rosenstein & colleagues.”
“Fmr. FBI Unit Chief confirms he initiated forensics that proved govt. computer intrusion.”
More at https://t.co/3duSZQk8eO@TheJusticeDept @realDonaldTrump https://t.co/FQwxpFdkhN pic.twitter.com/dDZQDgkXFp

— Sharyl Attkisson🕵️‍♂️ (@SharylAttkisson) January 9, 2020

Besides Attkisson, the other plaintiffs in the case are her husband and daughter who were also subjected to the illegal surveillance.

Besides Rosenstein, the other defendants named in the complaint are Shawn Henry, Sean Wesley Bridges, Robert Clarke, and Ryan White.

In 2010, then FBI Director Robert Mueller named Shawn Henry as the executive assistant director (EAD) of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch (CCRSB).

Henry left the FBI in 2012 and now is president of CrowdStrike Services, the cybersecurity firm hired by Democratic National Committee to examine its computer network in 2016 after it had been hacked. Crowdstrike ultimately determined Russia had hacked the DNC emails.

Shaun Wesley Bridges served as a Special Agent with the U.S. Secret Service for approximately six years, according to the complaint.

Between 2012 and 2014, he was assigned to the Baltimore Silk Road Task Force, a multi-agency group investigating illegal activity on the Silk Road, a covert online marketplace for illicit goods, including drugs.

In 2015 and 2017, Bridges was convicted of corruption related to his government work, and is now serving a prison sentence.

Defendant Robert Clarke was also a member of the Silk Road Task Force and Ryan White worked as an undercover informant for the DOJ.

White also worked as a contractor operating out of the Baltimore office under a group supervised by Rosenstein, according to the complaint.

In this capacity, White conducted work for the FBI, United States Secret Service, Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, where he and others were ordered to illegally hack into computer systems, servers, emails and phones.

“These defendants, as Government-officials, agents or employees, violated the Constitution as shown herein through their own individual actions,” the complaint states.

As part of the lawsuit, former FBI Unit Chief Les Szwajkowski confirms that he facilitated a forensic exam in January of 2013 that revealed government surveillance spyware in Attkisson’s computer. Szwajkowski signed a sworn Affidavit confirming the government intrusion into Attkisson’s computers.

The specialist quickly identified spyware proprietary to the federal government in Attkisson’s computer, according to Szwajkowski. He advised Attkisson that he and his intel associates were “shocked” that the government had used covert surveillance on a national journalist and he said they thought it was “outrageous.”

Szwajkowski says he reported to Attkisson that the analysis showed clear evidence that her computer was infiltrated with government spyware proprietary to the CIA, FBI or National Security Agency (NSA). Forensics indicated the particular intrusion uncovered by the analysis was accomplished through software attached to an otherwise innocuous email sent to Attkisson in February 2012.

Attkisson alleges that “numerous other Americans” were also targeted by Rosenstein’s unit while he was the U.S. Attorney in Baltimore, Maryland.