A Mob vs. Intel Showdown in Congress? The Return of CIA Informant Daughter, Representative Ilhan Omar to Her Committees And Stanford Mobster Sam Bankman-Fried's Failed Pro-Israel Foreign Policy
You have to understand these things as parts of a network, not individual actors
I’ve been traveling lately. I’m in Southern California. Thank you to those who signed up for the paid version of this Substack. Welcome new readers! Please make yourself at home in the archives.
Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
…
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language. — Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
Among the things you sort of know but aren’t allowed to talk about is how both Ilhan Omar and AOC are CIA.
Peer closely into both of their backgrounds and you’ll figure it out. It’s plain to see. A lot of the weirdos around the foreign-intelligence op Daily Wire don’t want to date AOC but occupy her.
Yes, yes, we aren’t supposed to talk about that. Nor are you supposed to logically conclude that the Squad itself is an exercise in the intelligence community pushing back on some of the excesses of the foreign compromised left wing.
If you were following me on Twitter, you wouldn’t be the least bit surprised that notwithstanding the promises (ha!) of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Rep. Ilhan Omar was once more appointed to the Foreign Affairs committee. McCarthy’s Likud donors call Omar anti-Semitic and Omar retaliates in kind by calling them racist. She’s right, of course. There’s something deeply disturbing about the only African-born member of Congress being stripped of her committees, especially as she has been a key ally of making Africa a less violent place.
So is being anti-Squad being anti-CIA? Consider that Omar seemingly doesn’t get in any trouble for all the financial shenanigans she and her new husband got up into, and there’s seemingly no problem at all with her having committed a kind of immigration fraud with her brother. (Or so the rumors go.) Add to that the weird DNA-based efforts to try to go after her family led to GOP operative Anton Lazzaro being done in on federal child sex trafficking charges.
For what it’s worth I support Omar 100 percent. I’ve been calling the Republican members of Congress I know and encouraging them to restore her to her committees.
America’s support for Likud is disgusting and disqualifying. We need to end Netanyahu’s occupation of Israel before we end the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine.
As if to prove her point that it’s all about the Benjamins, Sam Bankman-Fried delivered plenty of money to the anti-Squad congress critters.
You might also have noticed that with Sheldon Adelson dead and Steve Wynn and Barry Diller collared by the DOJ and SEC respectively there was a need for a new Chisraeli billionaire who could move Chinese cash into America through pro-Israel Jewish hands.
I think that person was Sam Bankman-Fried. That is, until the CIA stole the criminal Asian cash coursing through FTX and pressed into service of the state.
Yes, in much the same way that Meyer Lansky set up his criminal casino empire in Cuba and tried to escape the FBI by backing Golda Meir’s government and invoking his right to return, so too did Bankman-Fried wind up in Bahamas. (For those interested, I highly recommend the biopic Lansky, which came out a few years ago).
I take this story of Caribbean islands falling under American dominion elsewhere up elsewhere but the Bahamas broke from the monarchy and they’ll now be rewarded with some of the largesse looted from the Asian criminals washing their money through FTX’s exchange.
Were I SBF, I personally would not be picking fights with Sullivan & Cromwell — not without understanding that that’s the CIA’s longstanding law firm. (The 1988 book, A Law Unto Itself: The Untold Story of the Law Firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, is an immediately dated but essential read.)
Over the years you’ve seen Silicon Valley players like Andreessen Horowitz try to cozy up to law enforcement with mixed success. I suspect US intelligence is already working on turning or capturing A16Z and Founders Fund and turning them to productive ends. We hear that Andreessen was touring the CIA this week past and we know that Musk is wandering the halls of Congress looking for government monies like a vampire looks for a blood bank whilst visiting his good friend Speaker McCarthy.
A friend of mine writes in about all this and I think his email is worth reproducing in its entirety. From here on out it’s my friend’s writings aside from a parenthetical here or there.
You should read this write up on the money connections between Sam Bankman-Fried and Likudniks. It's from a hardcore leftist/true believer-type, but it's solid work.
Highlights:
* "I found more evidence SBF was collaborating with AIPAC and Trump supporting billionaires to stop the growth of the squad and the electoral left... Five billionaire funded PACs were coordinating closely on a strategy to defeat progressive candidates in Democratic primaries...
* Mark Mellman, a long-time operative and AIPAC ally, appears to be at the center of the effort and likely spearheaded the shared campaign. He was hired by four of the five groups this cycle, who collectively paid his firm $476,016.67...
* SBF personally contributed $29,250,000 to Protect Our Future and DMI PAC (which later contributed the money to Web3 Forward). Both of these groups spent the vast majority of their money on Democratic primaries. They also worked closely with two AIPAC affiliated SuperPACs called the United Democracy Project (UDP) and the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), and a group called Mainstream Democrats which aimed to defeat the “far-left.”...
* But, SBF wasn’t the only billionaire to support the effort. Trump supporting billionaires Bernard Marcus (owner of Home Depot), Robert Kraft (owner of the Patriots), and Paul Singer (owner of Elliot Investment Management) each gave a million dollars to help defeat working class candidates.
Overall, the five groups that make up the Injustice Democrats spent $44,454,111 on outside expenditure this cycle.
What did SBF have in common with the pro-Israel lobby and pro-Trump billionaires? In short, a desire to staunch the rise of the left, and keep the Democratic Party in the hands of financial and political elites who protect the status quo.
The SBF and AIPAC affiliated PACs which made up the Injustice Democrats worked together directly in at least 14 competitive primaries...
* The pro-Israel lobby has long expected Democrats and Republicans to acquiesce to the Israeli government’s policy towards the Palestinians, no matter how heinous or contrary to American interests it may be. But, the rise of the squad and the generational shift in the Democratic Party base’s attitudes towards Palestine threatened to shatter that consensus, and bring real, meaningful consequences to Israeli governments that systematically violate international law and Palestinians basic human rights.
In response to the rise of the squad and the shift within the Democratic Party on Israel, long-time AIPAC ally Mark Mellman started a group called the Democratic Majority for Israel. DMFI is basically AIPAC for Corporate Democrats. Starting in 2020, Mellman raised big money from AIPAC affiliated donors to funnel into competitive primaries between progressive and corporate Democrats to stop the rise of the squad. The effort initial met with mixed results.
But, in the 2022 Congressional midterm primaries, DMFI eventually hit on an approach that worked. Instead of focusing exclusively on Israel, they could serve as the nexus of anti-Squad and anti-working class political spending in Democratic Party politics...
* In addition to Mark Mellman’s DMFI, AIPAC created a PAC called the United Democracy Project (UDP). The group raised over 8 million dollars from AIPAC directly. UDP also became the venue for other billionaires who wanted to stop the left from rising in the Democratic Party -- even those who supported Donald Trump, like Robert Kraft, Bernard Marcus, and Paul Singer.
SBF and his pro-crypto allies were the second leg of the Injustice Democrats. SBF’s primary political vehicle this cycle was a group called Protect Our Future which was nominally concerned with pandemic prevention. Protect Our Future spent $28,530,613 on competitive primaries in the Democratic Party. In addition, SBF made a $2 million contribution to a pro-crypto PAC called DMI PAC -- which then proceeded to re-give the money to a group called Web3 Forward, which spent $4,663,333 this cycle -- 83% of it on competitive primaries.
The final group in the Injustice Democrats was started this cycle by billionaire Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn. (I find it interesting that this wasn’t Hoffman and Singer’s only collaboration this past cycle. Hoffman also gave $500k to American Unity (the pro-gay GOP PAC that Singer essentially founded.)f
According to their website, “Mainstream Democrats PAC was founded as the only Democratic group with the courage to consistently defend mainstream Democrats and defeat extreme candidates whose stated goal is “to overthrow” the Democratic Party.” They spent way less than the other groups in the Injustice Democrats, but were much more explicit about the group’s overall goal."
Possibly related story...
One of the most confusing pardons by Trump was of this guy Eliyahu Weinstein who ran a massive Ponzi scheme. Estimated to be up to $200 million. His first group of victims were from his hometown of Lakewood, NJ (majority Orthodox population)
"In the other system, people like Mr. Weinstein skipped the line and got their petitions directly on the president’s desk because they had money or connections, or allies who did. The team working for Mr. Weinstein’s release included Alan M. Dershowitz, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers during his first impeachment...
A Long Island businessman, Mr. Wachsler said he met Mr. Weinstein by chance five years ago when he went to visit a friend in federal prison who introduced the two men.
Mr. Weinstein, 45, had pleaded guilty in 2013 to charges related to a Ponzi-style real estate scheme that caused $200 million in losses, much of which came from investors from an Orthodox Jewish community in New Jersey with which he was associated. Prosecutors said he gained trust from potential victims by enlisting rabbis to vouch for him and making donations to Jewish organizations with his ill-gotten gains.
In 2014, he pleaded guilty to charges related to defrauding additional investors, including by falsely claiming to have access to coveted Facebook shares in the company’s forthcoming initial public offering, using the funds to pay legal fees related to his earlier indictment...
“Weinstein shamelessly exploited investors’ trust, using doctored documents for properties he didn’t own — including in a town that doesn’t exist — and continued to commit crimes while out on bail,” Paul J. Fishman said in a statement issued while he was overseeing the case as the United States attorney in New Jersey. Mr. Fishman added that Mr. Weinstein spent proceeds of his fraud “on fancy cars, jewelry and gambling trips,” as well as Jewish artifacts.
After becoming convinced that Mr. Weinstein was poorly served by his lawyer at trial, resulting in too harsh a sentence, Mr. Wachsler, who said he visited Mr. Weinstein 150 times in prison, hired new lawyers to appeal the case. Mr. Dershowitz joined the legal fight, explaining that he was retained by a “prominent” Jewish organization that he declined to identify.
After Mr. Trump lost his re-election, the strategy shifted to winning clemency from the departing president. Mr. Dershowitz, who also was paid to assist others who got commutations, advised on how to make the case for Mr. Weinstein. A clemency petition was filed with the Justice Department by the lawyers paid by Mr. Wachsler, who said he spent “a lot of money” to help Mr. Weinstein because he wanted to remedy what he saw as a grave injustice. He also hired the lobbyist Nick Muzin, paying him at least $75,000 last month, according to lobbying filings, to work his contacts in the administration.
A former top political aide to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, both Republicans, Mr. Muzin had known Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, since Mr. Meadows’s first campaign for Congress as a Republican from North Carolina in 2012.
Mr. Muzin said he emailed Mr. Meadows on Dec. 28 in an effort to take Mr. Weinstein’s appeal directly to Mr. Trump. “I’ve never asked you for anything since you’ve been in the big job,” Mr. Muzin said he wrote to Mr. Meadows. “I’m asking you for this.”
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/us/politics/trump-pardons.html
Why is this interesting? In an interview convicted criminal and former Gambino Crime Family associate Sal Romano said he was pressured to give Eliyahu Weinstein a break in some real estate deals with billionaire Norton Herrick by other members of the Italian mafia:
If you’re like me you wonder a lot about how much the mafia (with its attendant Israeli allies) continues to dominate our world and stories like this make you acutely aware of how powerful they really are.