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Rep. Matt Gaetz promoted a onetime Democratic aide after other staffers quit.
Prominent Trump alumni joined a nonprofit named after the former president s America First agenda.
Tesla hired a former staffer for Sen. Richard Blumenthal as an advisor on autonomous vehicles.
Isabela Belchior raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill last year when she left the office of Rep. Sylvia Garcia, a Texas Democrat who helped prosecute the first impeachment case against former President Donald Trump, to work as a legislative counsel for Rep. Matt Gaetz.
Now, as Gaetz aides jump ship amid a federal sex-trafficking investigation into the Florida Republican, Belchior is rising up the ranks of the outspoken Trump ally s congressional office.
In 2016, the FBI began investigating the Donald Trump campaign, with many of the leads coming from a discredited dossier that was sourced to the Kremlin and purchased by the Democratic Party. Subsequently, all Trump-Russian conspiracy charges from dossier author Christopher Steele were shown to be inaccurate, according to government and congressional investigations.
In March, Ms. Haines released a report, “Domestic Violent Extremism Poses Heightened Threat in 2021.” Some Republicans believe it was part of a Biden administration plan, in the wake of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot by Trump supporters, to broad-brush conservatives as domestic threats.
“The Democrats see political benefits in characterizing wide swaths of American citizens particularly Republicans and conservatives as politically suspect, politically violent and deserving of government surveillance,” said Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the panel’s top Republican. “However, I will remind those assembled here
Devin Nunes warns intel chiefs against targeting Americans, particularly Republicans washingtontimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from washingtontimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
New reports show that U.S. intelligence had “low to moderate” confidence in a story peddled by leftists and their corrupt corporate media cronies last year. The anonymously sourced story claimed Russia offered members of the Taliban bounties in exchange for killing American soldiers.
“The United States intelligence community assesses with low to moderate confidence that Russian intelligence officers sought to encourage Taliban attacks U.S. and coalition personnel in Afghanistan in 2019 and perhaps earlier,” a senior administration official said on Thursday.
“U.S. intelligence community agencies have low to moderate confidence in this judgment in part because it relies on detainee reporting, and due to the challenging operating environment in Afghanistan, our conclusion is based on information and evidence of connections between criminal agents in Afghanistan and elements of the Russian government,” the official continued.
Speaking a day earlier during a similar hearing in the Senate, Mr. Wray said the FBI plans to release an unclassified assessment “very shortly” concerning QAnon and the threat its adherents pose.
“We understand QAnon to be more of a reference to a complex conspiracy theory, or set of complex conspiracy theories, largely promoted online, which has sort of morphed into more of a movement,” Mr. Wray explained during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats Wednesday. Those theories include groundless claims about Mr. Trump fighting satanic pedophiles, among others.
Mr. Wray added that the effects of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, such as anxiety, social isolation and financial hardship, “all exacerbate people’s vulnerability” to those conspiracy theories.