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A Deeper Mystery Prime Badge

I hope you’ve had a chance to read Josh Kovensky’s exclusive about the DC feds impersonators. Normally we wouldn’t be terribly interested in whether someone’s rents were months or years in arrears. But in this case it makes this story even more baffling and mysterious. We’ve been wondering for a couple days, Who was behind this? Where’d the money come from? As Josh reports, it wasn’t coming from anywhere. Because these guys never paid rent at all. The landlord eventually sued them but when it came time to evict they were protected by COVID-era eviction moratoriums.

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A Must Read Prime Badge

I want to strongly commend this article in The Wall Street Journal on Bucha to your attention. It’s very hard to read and also a near masterpiece of narrative reporting. We’ve all seen the pictures and the horrors of this town. And there’s been claims of organized mass killing and even a plan of organized genocide. This account provides a more complicated but no less horrifying account. As we’ve heard from other towns, Russian soldiers were initially reasonably behaved and even polite to Ukrainian civilians in the town. Some confided with locals that they weren’t sure why they were there or what the point of the war was. But over time discipline began to break down. And Russian soldiers became increasingly suspicious that Ukrainian civilians were communicating their positions to Ukrainian soldiers and irregulars. This became a bigger concern as the Russian offensive bogged down. “They saw a spotter in every person who lived on the fifth floor,” one Bucha resident told the Journal, “They saw a commando in each of us.”

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Weirder and Weirder Prime Badge

We’re following various leads on the DC Secret Service/impersonation caper. Some of them are quite, quite weird. But the most interesting thing about this case so far is how little information we know. The raids in this story happened two days ago, Wednesday afternoon. Normally in a case like this — apparent espionage, probable corruption involving the Secret Service — we’d be seeing a steady stream of articles revealing new details of the plot. But there’s close to nothing. I get the sense that’s because the DOJ and the FBI don’t really know themselves. Or at least, they didn’t yesterday.

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A Bit More Info on the DC Caper Prime Badge

Two new nuggets from the latest AP report on the DC caper we’ve been discussing through the day. Prosecutors allege that one of the two men accused of impersonating federal agents told witnesses that he was associated with the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency. He apparently also had visas showing multiple recent visits to Pakistan and Iran. Prosecutors also told a judge at a hearing today that during the raids on the men’s apartments FBI agents found “body armor, gas masks, zip ties, handcuffs, equipment to break through doors, drones, radios and police training manuals.” Yikes.

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The Legislator Behind AZ’s New Voter Restrictions Was A Key Player In The Big Lie Prime Badge
Some More Details on That DC Caper Prime Badge

As we wait to hear more about the arrest of two men trying to infiltrate the Secret Service there’s one part of the story I want to highlight. Multiple U.S. Secret Service officers accepted free apartments for roughly a year from one of the accused men, Arian Taherzadeh. The value of these gifts varied from just over forty thousand to just under fifty thousand dollars annually. This is in addition to various other gifts.

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Key Selling Point For Oklahoma Abortion Bill: It Slams Door In Face Of Desperate Texans Prime Badge
Republicans Smell Blood In The Water On The Voting Rights Act. Again. Prime Badge
Russia’s ‘Denazification’ Strategy Emerges, Including Specific Ukrainian Targets Prime Badge
US/EU vs Russia/China and Then Everyone Else

In the first weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine we saw what appeared to be almost universal global condemnation of Russia’s actions. There was that lopsided UN vote condemning the action in which only four other nations, all pariahs or under de facto Russian occupation, took Russia’s side. But over time, a somewhat different story has emerged. Russia has very, very few backers. But there’s a big chunk of the world, likely the majority of the world’s population, living in countries where the governments basically do not want to take sides.

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