Multiple reports that the aircraft have left now, more than 2 hours after the raid behind. Highly unusual and I suspect we'll be seeing news about this in the coming hours.
Wow NYT saying the raid may have been for Al Qaeda leader Zawahiri himself. NatSec contacts definitely have the feeling that this was an extraordinary raid only approved under a very select set of circumstances. nyti.ms/3oh4Gn6
“The White House was abuzz on Wednesday night about something secretive afoot, and Pentagon officials were unusually tight-lipped about the mission’s details.”
Zawahiri being in Syria doesn’t really make much sense, but stranger things have happened. It’s clear that this raid wasn’t for some local ISIS commander.
One early thought was that perhaps this was a high stakes hostage rescue (Austin Tice?) but as the hours tick by, that seems more unlikely. Tice has been held for over 10 years, if he remains alive.
BREAKING: The FBI is probing a Russian cybersecurity firm that allegedly has major clients in the US. There are concerns that the company's products could be a backdoor for Russian intelligence. I spoke with more than a dozen sources over 6 months:
Infotecs was founded by Andrey CHAPCHAEV, a former senior KGB research official who is still the largest shareholder. The company has numerous licenses with Russian intelligence and Russian state bodies. The licenses are not shown on the English version of the website...
In Sept 2018, the US Commerce Department put Infotecs on an export ban list, saying that Infotecs was had “enabled the activities of malicious Russian cyber actors.”
Tish James including Trump Scotland in her brief of evidence is super interesting. Didn't think they'd go after his foreign deals. ag.ny.gov/press-release/…
Trump's appraisal of his Scotland property to his tax accountant was based on a quote from Trump's own compliance officer to Forbes lol
This is brutal. Trump's counsel hired an appraiser for his Silver Springs property. The appraiser told them it was worth $29M-$50M. Trump then turned around and told his tax accountants at Mazars that it was worth $161M.
Update: 2 days after my report from last month, former Soviet Foreign Ministry official Sergey Shestakov filed an amendment to state that his dealings with Oleg Deripaska's top aide are now terminated: efile.fara.gov/docs/7048-Amen…
In this amendment, Shestakov, the former Soviet official says he got $25,000 from the law firm Kobre and Kim in November 2019 and $8,000 from a "business intelligence" company that does not seem to exist anywhere online in November 2021.
I've updated the article to include this new information that makes this filing even weirder. I would love to hear from the #FARA expert community @annalecta@CBHolman@JoshRudes