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In an explosive new op-ed, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) claimed that at least 15 separate federal agencies knew that attempts to create a COVID-19-like coronavirus were being undertaken at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as early as January 2018. Yet, heads of these agencies did not reveal this information to the public; for years, they actively refused to release information on the project to lawmakers such as Paul, who were attempting to provide congressional oversight. “For years, I have been fighting to obtain records from dozens of federal agencies relating to the origins of COVID-19 and the DEFUSE project,” wrote...

Imagine this: The author of the most popular book in the country goes on Bill Maher’s show and says the following about President Barack Obama: “There is something in the book that I was absolutely sure of but it was so incendiary that I just didn’t have the ultimate proof,” he says. “I didn’t have the blue dress.” The host pushes the coy writer for a hint. “You just have to read between the lines toward the end of the book,” the writer answers. “When you hit that paragraph you’re going to say, ‘Bingo!’” Within moments, every person with a...

Lawyers for President Trump sent a cease-and-desist letter to Trump’s former senior strategist Stephen K. Bannon, arguing he had violated a non-disclosure agreement in speaking about his time on the campaign and in Trump’s most trusted inner circle. In a letter sent Wednesday night, Trump’s lawyers told Bannon his comments to author Michael Wolff in a soon-to-be-released tell-all book violate Bannon’s employment agreement with Trump in numerous ways and also defame the president.

In a statement, SNC said that NASA concluded that the Nov. 11 free flight of the Dream Chaser engineering test article, at Edwards Air Force Base in California, met or exceeded all the requirements of the company’s last remaining funded milestone in its Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) award from 2012. During the flight test, the Dream Chaser was released from a helicopter at an altitude of about 3,750 meters and glided to an autonomous runway landing 60 seconds later, reaching a top speed of 530 kilometers per hour during its descent. ... The milestone, formally known as Milestone 4B, was...

Editor’s Note: Lawfare’s Board of Directors has published a post regarding this article and our editorial standards here. In the United States, the latest Iranian protests have sparked a kind of debate in which we argue fervently about whether the U.S. should tweet its support or just shut up. At the risk of making the Trump administration look moderate, I think we can choose between more than waving our hands and sitting on them. Remember, when the Iranian regime decided it didn’t like U.S. activities in Iraq, it found considerably more direct ways to express its disapproval. It just started...

HEALTH bosses have confirmed they are facing an outbreak of the “eye-bleeding fever” after four people died of the suspected disease in weeks. Uganda’s health ministry has today finally admitted it is facing the risk of a large-scale explosion of the viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF). VHF causes victims to suffer a burning fever before beginning to bleed from orifices including their eyes, anuses and mouths. It comes after a girl, nine, was reportedly killed by the infection Uganda, and three people died in neighbouring South Sudan of similar symptoms. Uganda health minster Sarah Opendi confirmed emergency response teams are now...

There have been four wild developments on Wednesday and in recent days which will have major impacts on the future of the Iranian nuclear standoff. 1. Ahmedinejad ‘reveals’ who Mossad recruited within Iranian intelligence to steal nuclear secrets Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has told Iran International that the Mossad recruited the highest-ranking Iranian counter-intelligence official in charge of catching Israeli spies in order to steal the Islamic Republic’s nuclear secrets. The January 31, 2018, raid altered the region’s geopolitics, leading to the US withdrawing from the JCPOA nuclear deal and setting the International Atomic Energy Agency into a years-long...

A Russian historian whose exposure of Soviet leader Josef Stalin's crimes angered state officials is due to begin enforced psychiatric testing this week amid fears he will be falsely declared insane, his lawyer said on Tuesday. Yuri Dmitriev, 61, is on trial in northwest Russia on charges brought by state prosecutors of involving his adopted daughter, then 11, in child pornography, of illegally possessing "the main elements of" a firearm, and of depravity involving a minor. Some of Russia's leading cultural figures say Dmitriev was framed because his focus on Stalin's crimes - he found a mass grave with up...

From Jan. 8, 2018 (Bandy's made a career of this) In a bid to have President Donald Trump removed from office, the left is pushing the “diagnosis” of a Yale psychiatrist who has ruled him “unfit” to be president. However, Dr. Bandy X Lee’s own dirty little secret has just been exposed — and it’s bad news for her career. Yale Psychiatrist who 'Diagnosed' Trump Unfit Has Dirty Secret That's Just Been Exposed After giving her professional psychiatric diagnosis of President Donald Trump, rendering him mentally unfit for office, Yale psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X Lee’s prestigious career is in hot...

Shanghai Academy acts as a front for Chinese spy recruitment, according to FBI The Brookings Institution, a prominent Washington, D.C., think tank, partnered with a Shanghai policy center that the FBI has described as a front for China’s intelligence and spy recruitment operations, according to public records and federal court documents. The Brookings Doha Center, the think tank’s hub in Qatar, signed a memorandum of understanding with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in January 2018, the institution said. The academy is a policy center funded by the Shanghai municipal government that has raised flags within the FBI. The partnership...

In 2018 — nearly two years before the start of the global coronavirus pandemic — U.S. officials in China sent warnings to Washington expressing safety concerns over a Wuhan facility's research into coronaviruses in horseshoe bats, adding weight to the theory that the novel virus originated in a lab and not at a Wuhan wet market. The news broke in a report Wednesday by Josh Rogin of the Washington Post, who said that he obtained access to the first of two diplomatic cables sent from State Department officials who had visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology in January and March...

BEIJING -- China has opened its first bio-safety level four laboratory, capable of conducting experiments with highly pathogenic microorganisms, according to the national health authority on Thursday. Wuhan national bio-safety level four lab of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Wuhan P4 lab) is part of Sino-French cooperation in prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases, said the Department of Health Science, Technology and Education with the National Health and Family Planning Commission. Level four is the highest bio-safety level, used for diagnostic work and research on easily transmitted pathogens which can cause fatal disease, including Ebola virus. The Wuhan P4...

Yale psychiatry professor Bandy Lee has been raising concerns about President Trump’s mental health for over a year and suggested in a new interview that Trump should be physically contained for an “urgent evaluation” to determine his mental state. In a Vox interview published Saturday, reporter Eliza Barclay asks Lee, “Okay, so you’re calling for an evaluation; you’re serious about that. How could he possibly be evaluated, since it seems like he wouldn’t voluntarily do it?” Lee responded, “We encounter this often in mental health. Those who most require an evaluation are the least likely to submit to one. That...

After more than three weeks of testimony and four days of deliberation, a New York jury convicted a Turkish banker charged in a U.S. sanctions-busting case that strained relations between the two countries. Hakan Atilla, 47, the deputy general manager of Halkbank, was found guilty of five counts of conspiracy and bank fraud but acquitted of money laundering. The verdict is likely to bring sharp rebukes from the government of Turkish President Recep Erdogan, who was implicated during the closely watched trial. Atilla faces up to 30 years in prison when he is sentenced by U.S. District Judge Richard Berman...

Shipp was a CIA Anti Terrorism expert and was assigned as a protective agent for the Director of Central Intelligence. He is the recipient of a Medallion for overseas covert operations, two CIA Meritorious Unit Citations and three Exceptional Performance Awards. Zerohedge published a partial transcript of Ship's comments made to USAWatchdog.com's Greg Hunter: "They are terrified, they are terrified right now. They did not expect Trump to do what he is doing now. The reason they tried to get him even before he was elected is they knew he was uncontrollable, and they knew if he got in there,...

The Associated Press (AP) described the matter of Joe Biden’s leveraging of U.S. foreign aid to pressure Ukraine to fire a prosecutor investigating corruption at Burisma — a Ukrainian energy company upon whose board of directors Hunter Biden sat — in order to protect his second son as a “false narrative.” The AP echoed similar news media outlets’ mischaracterization of the above-mentioned event, including the New York Times, Snopes, NPR, USA Today, Vox, and the Washington Post. In a column identifying differing perceptions of political goings on being related to varying news media consumption patterns, the AP dismisses Joe Biden’s...

On a Monday night (February 12th, 2018) episode of Tucker Carlson a democrat member of the House Intelligence committee said something interesting that almost everyone missed. Appearing on the show to joust with Tucker, HPSCI member Eric Swalwell stated: “the House Intel Committee has not interviewed a single witness in over a month”. [Video Here, quote @03:47] This statement is rather enlightening. A month earlier, January 4th, 2018, an agreement was finally made between House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and DOJ Asst. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for complete disclosure of all unreadacted documents.....AND a list of witnesses who Nunes...

President Donald Trump gave the order to kill Iran's Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani a few days ago following a Hazbollah mob's attacks on the United States' embassy in Baghdad. Now that Soleimani is dead, we're learning that this isn't the first opportunity a nation has had to kill the Iranian terrorist. According to a January 2018 report from the Israel newspaper Haaretz, leaders in Israel were prepared to kill Soleimani back in 2015 but the Obama administration put an end to the plan. Just as Israel was "on the verge" of killing Soleimani, the Obama administration alerted Iranian officials...

The United States has allegedly given Israel permission to assassinate a top Iranian special forces commander who was the mastermind behind Tehran's military operations across the Middle East, Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported on Monday. General Qassem Suleimani has served as the commander of the Quds Force - Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards' foreign operations division - for 20 years, and has been considered as one of the most powerful and controversial military figures by Western governments. Suleimani is also a controversial figure in the Middle East, especially among Sunnis, due to the human rights violations committed by Iran-backed Shiite militia groups...

An American citizen detained overseas by the U.S. military has asked the American Civil Liberties Union to sue the Trump administration for holding him as an enemy combatant. The unidentified man spoke with ACLU attorneys this week and said they could challenge his detention in federal court, the ACLU wrote in a court filing entered Friday. “The Trump administration illegally denied an American his rights to access a lawyer and a court for nearly four months, but those efforts have finally failed,” said ACLU attorney Jonathan Hafetz. “Now that our client has secured the judicial review that the government attempted...