By Robert Walton of UtilityDive

Stakeholders across the U.S. electric sector are preparing for Winter Storm Fern, which is expected to impact an area stretching from Texas to New York, as far north as the upper Midwest and into parts of the Southeast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration anticipates the storm to begin today and run through Sunday.

Anticipating widespread power outages, local distribution utilities have been activating recovery plans and warning customers to be prepared. The North American Electric Reliability Corp. says it is “encouraged that industry has taken actions to prepare for what appears to be a very challenging winter storm system.”

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright has asked grid operators to be prepared to utilize up to 35 GW of backup generation.

In a Thursday letter to reliability coordinators and balancing authorities, Wright called for the Department of Energy to “prepare to issue orders” under section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to “ensure that the tens of gigawatts of available backup generation, which would otherwise stand idle, is available during emergency conditions.”

When notified, “even merely by phone call … I will review the facts and, if appropriate, authorize the Reliability Coordinators and Balancing Authorities to direct backup generation facilities to run as a last resort before declaring an Energy Emergency Alert (EEA) 3, thereby avoiding potential blackouts,” Wright said.

The letter offered few details about the 35 GW of backup generation, and DOE did not immediately respond to questions.

According to Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, the units are diesel generators located at data centers and commercial properties. 

“As the order recognizes, most of these units are not grid connected, and so have no utility or coordination abilities to address a system emergency,” Slocum said in a statement. “Unmentioned in the order is the massive harm to public health stemming from long-duration operations of these polluting units.”

The Winter Storm Fern has been compared to Winter Storm Uri, which caused power outages across the country in 2021 and was particularly harsh in Texas, where almost 250 people died. The catastrophe led to reforms across the Texas utility sector, and in other areas.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas issued a weather watch Wednesday noting the possibility for higher electrical demand and the lower reserves during Winter Storm Fern. However, grid conditions “are expected to be normal,” it said.

The Lone Star State grid operator also said it is “coordinating preparation efforts with the Texas Energy Reliability Council, the Public Utility Commission of Texas, the Texas Division of Emergency Management, and other state agencies, as well as with Market Participants.”

CenterPoint Energy, which serves the Houston area, said it has approximately 3,300 employees and contract workers ready to support “storm preparation and potential restoration” across its territory. The utility serves approximately 2.7 million customers across the Houston area and surrounding communities.

Utilities around the country have signaled to customers they are prepared for the storm and recovery. In New Jersey, PSE&G said it is ready for “significant snowfall and extended frigid temperatures,” and warned customers that “snow and ice can bring hazards that disrupt power.” The utility serves about 2.4 million electric customers and 1.9 million gas customers.

“Our crews are ready 24-7 to restore power outages and handle increased requests to repair heating systems for our customers,” John Latka, PSE&G senior vice president of electric transmission and distribution, said in a statement.

In South Carolina, Dominion Energy said customers “should take steps now to prepare and keep themselves and their families safe.” The utility serves electricity to 3.6 million homes and businesses in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, and regulated gas service to 500,000 customers in South Carolina.

“We’re closely monitoring the forecast calling for a mix of wintry precipitation, and that kind of weather can create significant challenges for our crews,” Keller Kissam, president of Dominion Energy South Carolina, said in a statement. The utility has activated an emergency operations center from which to respond, Kissam added.

The New York grid operator has adequate generation in place under forecast conditions, but said it would be keeping a close eye on fuel supplies.

We’ve “seen generators in recent winters challenged with accessing adequate fuel capacity during very cold conditions,” Aaron Markham, vice president of operations for the New York Independent System Operator, said in a statement. “We continue to work closely with power producers, utility companies, and neighboring grid operators to assess the status of generating and transmission capacity in advance of the cold snap.”

While most of the storm preparation focus is on grid reliability and its impacts on residential consumers, financial analysts have also keyed in on potential business impacts. 

“More data center, more renewables, & less coal creates a vulnerable situation,” Jefferies equity analyst Julien Dumoulin-Smith wrote in a Thursday note.

“We view reliability and resource adequacy shortfall events as key negative tail risks for independent power producers,” Dumoulin-Smith said. “High profile power outages in data center markets like [Texas] would lead to further stakeholder push-back on data center demand outpacing supply additions.”

The private jets are departing, $2,500 per night sex workers have cleared out, and European globalist elites spent the week annoyed by the America First message from President Trump and Elon Musk at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The rationale for California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s attendance remains unclear, but his presence and conduct were widely viewed as an embarrassment for the U.S. With the event concluded, attention now shifts to the weaponry deployed to protect heads of state and billionaires.

On Thursday, Rebel News journalist Avi Yemini was boots on the ground in Davos, where he shared his observations of the military technologies deployed across the area, from the streets to helipads to the regional airport.

“Remember, these are the ‘masters of the universe’ who tell us that our carbon footprint is going to destroy the planet and we’ve got to do everything to reduce it,” Yemini said. “Meanwhile, they’re flying on private jets into private helipads.”

Yemini pointed out, “What I’ve noticed that’s different about Davos 2026 … is the security presence. This year at this helipad, there’s extraordinary anti-aircraft and anti-drone defenses set up.”

“There’s also a much larger-than-usual military presence in and around Davos. So it begs the question: is there a particular threat they’re responding to? Or is it the mere fact that this year the World Economic Forum boasts the most VVIPs, from world leaders, to business people, to NGOs, in its history,” he continued.

🚨WEF oligarchs using private helipad to avoid traffic@OzraeliAvi Yemini gave viewers an exclusive look at the private helipad being used by the ‘elites’ to avoid traffic on their way to the World Economic Forum.

Rebel News journalist Avi Yemini is on the ground in Davos,… pic.twitter.com/OkIXrzA0ac

— Rebel News (@RebelNewsOnline) January 22, 2026

Yemini said this year’s defense included AI-powered drone detection and Swiss Army anti-aircraft systems, as well as the usual troops on the ground and other high-tech systems to protect the rich and famous.

Via The Cradle

Washington has threatened to block Iraq’s access to its own oil revenue held in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York if representatives of Shia armed parties enjoying support from Iran are included in the next government, Reuters  reported Friday.

“The US warning was delivered repeatedly over the past two months by the US Charges d’Affaires in Baghdad, Joshua Harris, in conversations with Iraqi officials and influential Shi’ite leaders,” Reuters reported, citing three Iraqi officials and one source familiar with the matter.

The threat is part of US President Donald Trump’s effort to weaken Iran through a “maximum pressure” campaign of economic sanctions, including on the Islamic Republic’s oil exports. Trump also bombed Iran’s nuclear sites as part of Israel’s unprovoked 12-day war on Iran in June.

Because of US sanctions, few countries can trade with Iran, increasing its reliance on Iraqi markets for exports and on Baghdad’s banking system as a monetary outlet to the rest of the world.

As punishment, the US government has restricted the flow of dollars to Iraqi banks on several occasions in recent years, raising the price of imports for Iraqi consumers and making it difficult for Iraq to pay for desperately needed natural gas imports from Iran.

However, this is the first time the US has threatened to cut off the flow of dollars from the New York Federal Reserve to the Central Bank of Iraq.

Officials in Washington can threaten Baghdad in this way because the country was forced to place all revenues from oil sales into an account at the New York Fed following the US military’s invasion of the country in 2003.

This gives Washington strong leverage against Baghdad, as oil revenue accounts for 90 percent of the Iraqi government’s budget. While occupying Iraq for decades and controlling its oil revenues, Washington accuses Iran of infringing on Iraq’s sovereignty.

“The United States supports Iraqi sovereignty, and the sovereignty of every country in the region. That leaves absolutely no role for Iran-backed militias that pursue malign interests, cause sectarian division, and spread terrorism across the region,” a US State Department spokesperson told Reuters.

Some Shia political parties, including several that make up the Coordination Framework (CF), are linked to the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), which see themselves as anti-terror militias formed in 2014 with Iranian support to fight ISIS and later incorporated into the Iraqi armed forces.

Iraq held parliamentary elections in November and is still in the process of forming the next government. Prime Minister Muhammad Shia al-Sudani, who enjoyed good relations with both Washington and Tehran, has decided not to contend for another term as premier.

The decision has cleared the way for Nouri al-Maliki, of the State of Law Coalition and the Dawa Party, to potentially return to power. 

Maliki, who enjoys support from the PMU-linked parties, served as prime minister between 2006 and 2014, including when ISIS invaded western Iraq and conquered large swathes of the country. 

As the U.S. takes control of #Venezuela’s oil revenues, questions around transparency, oversight, & #corruption risks loom large. @politico examines the parallels with Iraq with insights from @K2Integrity’s @JCZarate1 on the challenges of accountability: https://t.co/JO7Dvq93hQ

— K2 Integrity (@K2Integrity) January 23, 2026

Trump threatened a new bombing campaign against Iran following several weeks of violent riots and attacks on security forces organized and incited by Israeli intelligence. Trump allegedly called off the bombing after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned him that Tel Aviv’s air defenses were not prepared for a new confrontation with Iran.

During the war in June, Iran retaliated against Israel by launching barrages of ballistic missiles and drones, which did severe damage to Israeli military sites, including in Tel Aviv.

President Trump has added fresh fuel to the fire amid historic inter-NATO tensions as the Greenland issue is front and center. The US leader told Fox News on Thursday the United States had ultimately “never needed” the NATO alliance and accused allies of staying “a little off the front lines” in Afghanistan.

“I’ve always said, will they be there if we ever needed them? That’s really the ultimate test. I’m not sure of that,” Trump said in the interview, a clip of which can be watched below. “We’ve never needed them. They’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan and this or that. And they did. They stayed a little back, off the front lines.”

Trump on NATO: “I’ve always said, will they be there if we ever needed them? That’s really the ultimate test. I’m not sure of that. We’ve never needed them. They’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan and this or that. And they did. They stayed a little back, off the front… pic.twitter.com/fA0i1S3LxY

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) January 22, 2026

Trump’s words have gone viral across Europe, triggering an avalanche of angry denunciations, with various leaders – including military generals – demanding an apology.

One of the fiercest reactions is coming from UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, given that 457 members of the British armed forces died in Afghanistan over the course of the 20+ year-long war and occupation.

Starmer denounced the remarks as “insulting and frankly appalling” and suggested the US president should apologize.

He said he will never forget the sacrifice and bravery of British soldiers who fought for the US-NATO coalition in Afghanistan, and added he is “not surprised” Trump’s words “have caused such hurt”. Downing Street has also slammed the remarks as “wrong”.

The BBC and other UK outlets have been giving live coverage to British and European leaders’ reactions, and even interviewing family members of fallen soldiers. The outlet has reminded its audience that even Canada suffered significant troop losses:

Following the terror attacks of 11 September 2001, the US invoked Nato’s Article 5 – which treats an attack on one member as an attack against them all – and launched military action in Afghanistan.

A total of 51 countries – both Nato and non-Nato , external- took part in the conflict that followed.

Among Nato nations that fought in Afghanistan, 24 suffered casualties according to iCasualities, external, a website that has tracked deaths in the war from 2001 to 2021, when the troops withdrew.

Over this period, the US suffered the highest number of deaths overall – 2,465 – followed by the UK with 457, external and Canada with 158.

Prince Harry from the British Royal Family even served a tour in Afghanistan. People of various nationalities have in response been posting old war footage on social media, showing NATO troops actively fighting on the front lines. As examples…

Trump: “You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, or this and that. And they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines”.

Danish soldiers, Helmand Province, 2009: pic.twitter.com/wpAEeRm3VZ

— Rasmus Jarlov (@RasmusJarlov) January 22, 2026

🇬🇧 Here is a member of the British SAS Special Forces wearing just a Baseball Cap and a T-shirt whilst he “Stayed a little back, off the front lines” fighting the Taliban alongside the United States Marine. pic.twitter.com/zePwOaotML

— Bricktop_NAFO (@Bricktop_NAFO) January 23, 2026

Despite all the collective sacrifice, the Taliban today remains in firm control of Kabul and the central Asian country, following the big – and controversial – full American and allied withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.

As for this Trump-Starmer tiff, one lesson that can be gleaned from a European perspective is that countries should be more cautious and skeptical in terms of blindly following Washington’s lead in its foreign wars and adventurism overseas. The Pax Americana tends to have a short memory, and so won’t necessarily be ‘thankful’ of allied sacrifices. The US as a ‘global police force’ (a trend especially of the GWOT era) uses, chews up, and spits out who it wants. That’s the cynical read anyway, somewhat confirmed in Trump’s latest remarks.

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

The 2.2 million men that are currently on the run amounts to 6.8% of the Ukrainian population and is slightly larger than the percentage of Asians in the US.

New Ukrainian Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov shockingly revealed that 200,000 men have already deserted thus far and ten times more (2 million) are actively dodging the draft, which are probably an underestimate but are in any case still very large numbers. To put that into context, Ukraine claimed in early 2025 to have had a population of 32 million, likely an overestimate, so the 2.2 million men who either deserted or dodged the draft amounts to at least 6.8% of the population currently on the run.

Rada Deputy Dmitry Razumkov claimed during a parliamentary session last month that his country had already lost half a million troops by then with an equal number wounded, possibly also an underestimate, while Ukraine is thought to currently field around 900,000 active troops. All of this data enables observers to better understand the significance of these “voluntary losses” since it should be clear by now that 2.2 million more troops would have certainly made a major difference for Ukraine.

That’s not to imply that it would have been able to reverse the military-strategic dynamics of the conflict that have trended in Russia’s favor since the epic failure of Ukraine’s NATO-backed counteroffensive in summer 2023, but perhaps it might have been able to decelerate the pace of its losses afterwards. Ukraine could have thus also been in a comparatively better diplomatic position too going into Trump 2.0 a year ago and that might have in turn predisposed him to a relatively harder line towards Russia as well.

For that reason, while the scale of its desertions and draft-dodging can’t credibly be described as a game-changer, it can still be considered a significant variable that adversely affected Ukraine’s fortunes. By contrast, this was never a relevant factor for Russia, which hasn’t conscripted anyone unlike Ukraine. On that topic, it’s worthwhile reminding readers about Ukraine’s forcible conscription policy that’s been made infamous by viral videos showing officials snatching young and old men alike off the streets.

This footage and stories that draft-eligible males (25-60 years of age) heard through the grapevine are partly why 2 million of them decided to go on the run and dodge the draft. They’ve also seen drone footage of the conflict zone and are therefore well aware of how likely it is that they’ll be killed shortly after being deployed to the front. These men might sincerely consider themselves to be Ukrainian patriots in their hearts, however they conceptualize it, but they’re not willing to die for nothing.

This segues into the plummeting popularity of the conflict among the populace and increasing support for a quick end thereto per recent Gallup polling. Trump just blamed Zelensky for stalling peace talks, which is in direct opposition to the will of the same people in whose name he still acts despite the expire of his term in May 2024. Other than his authoritarian tendencies, corruption is likely responsible for his obstinance since he’s thought to be profiting from the conflict and might thus fear charges once it ends.

Whenever he’s asked about the conflict, Trump usually says that he wants to end it as soon as possible in order to stop the killing, which it’s now known has spooked at least 2.2 million Ukrainian men into either deserting or dodging the draft. The 6.8% of the population that’s currently on the run is slightly larger than the Asian population in the US (6.7%) per the last census. The sooner that the conflict ends, the sooner that they can re-enter the economy and help rebuild their country, unless they flee abroad first.

Authored by Stu Cvrk via The Epoch Times,

The theory of suicidal empathy is gaining increasing currency among people who are deeply concerned about the apparent fracturing of Western civilization, particularly American culture.

Suicidal empathy can be defined as excessive or misdirected compassion expressed by individuals or groups that prioritizes short-term emotional responses over cultural norms and long-term societal stability and personal well-being. Over time, the concept can lead to self-destructive outcomes for individuals (the loss of traditional values in favor of equity and other false gods) or societies (robust nationalism replaced by unchecked multiculturalism and moral decay).

A good example is the European Union’s embrace of open borders policies that led to the flood of people from the Middle East and Africa in the name of “empathy for poor people” without regard to assimilation.

Who gains from this chaos and angst?

Any distress that destabilizes Western civilization serves the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which exploits anything that undermines the United States and its allies.

Some observers believe that Beijing covertly amplifies the elements of suicidal empathy in the West—excessive compassion, cultural relativism, polarization, and over-tolerance of immigrants who refuse to assimilate—as a low-cost, asymmetric front in its hybrid war against the United States.

Let us examine the issue.

What Is Suicidal Empathy?

Lebanese–Canadian evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad coined the term in 2024 to describe excessive, misdirected, or hyperactive empathy that becomes self-destructive. As with anyone who postulates a new concept, he is considered by some to be a “controversial figure.”

Saad is the author of “The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense,” a university professor at Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business, and a frequent presence on X (@GadSaad), podcasts (such as “The Joe Rogan Experience”), and YouTube. He explains how suicidal empathy fuels open borders, cultural chaos, and self-sabotage in the United States and the West in general.

He argues that suicidal empathy leads some to prioritize the needs of illegal immigrants over those of citizens and veterans, to show leniency toward criminals and addicts in the name of compassion, to refuse to confront national threats for fear of “appearing unkind,” and to value the appearance of being kind and empathetic even when the result is harmful to individuals or society.

Saad maintains that prioritizing compassion for potential threats, outsiders, or criminals over one’s own group’s safety, security, and long-term survival has led to questionable policy choices by liberal governments in the West.

Saad is critical of “woke” culture, political correctness, Islamofascism, and what he calls the Marxist corruption of academia, which he groups as “idea pathogens”—harmful ideologies that spread like parasites and supplant traditional moral, political, and cultural values, particularly those rooted in Judeo–Christian philosophy.

Critics argue that elite-driven immigration policies, motivated by suicidal empathy, have downplayed assimilation requirements, contributing to the persistence of culturally insular communities. They often point to debates surrounding Islamist activism or illiberal norms within some immigrant-heavy areas of Minnesota, Michigan, and Texas as illustrative cases.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) confer during a hearing about fraud in Minnesota at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 7, 2026. Federal prosecutors filed charges against dozens of people in Minnesota, many from the area’s Somali community, for stealing taxpayer dollars through fraudulent social services schemes. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Perhaps even more consequential are the recent federal prosecutions uncovering large-scale fraud schemes involving Somali-American defendants, most notably the Feeding Our Future case in Minnesota, which prosecutors say siphoned roughly $250 million from a federal child-nutrition program. The scandal exposed serious failures of state and federal oversight and further eroded public trust in government institutions.

A combination of bureaucratic incompetence, risk aversion, and fear of appearing discriminatory allowed the fraud to persist longer than it should have. This reluctance to enforce rules rigorously—suicidal empathy—can weaken accountability and invite abuse, ultimately harming both taxpayers and the very communities such policies are meant to protect

These fractures in American society serve the CCP, as whatever distracts, disrupts, weakens, or causes chaos among Americans is considered good by the communists.

CCP Exploitation of Suicidal Empathy

“Unrestricted Warfare,” an important 1999 book by People’s Liberation Army Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, advocates the use of “unrestricted” or “beyond-limits” warfare, emphasizing non-military methods to weaken adversaries such as the United States without resorting to direct armed conflict.

“Beyond limits” has since been expanded to include all forms of hybrid warfare, short of kinetic warfare. While suicidal empathy was unknown in 1999, it is not a stretch to speculate that the CCP has embraced it as another important front in its ever-expanding hybrid warfare against the United States.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping would appear to recognize and champion chaos as a means to achieve Chinese global dominance, as his statement from 2021 indicates: “The world today is undergoing a great change in situation unseen in a century. Since the most recent period, the most important characteristic of the world is, in a word, ‘chaos,’ and this trend appears likely to continue.” And societal chaos is a direct result of suicidal empathy.

The CCP uses united front actions to influence Western academia and media to exploit political and societal divisions in their ongoing hybrid war. By leveraging proxies, disinformation, funding networks, and diaspora communities, the CCP amplifies polarization in the United States on issues such as race and identity politics, immigration and open borders, and the cancel culture, turning them into tools for societal upheaval and chaos.

Chinese state media, Chinese embassies, and CCP-funded nonprofit groups publicly express empathy for protected classes in America, the underprivileged, and especially illegal aliens from the Third World in a synergistic effort to amplify the suicidal empathy being pushed by American elites.

The Chinese regime routinely deploys fake social media accounts on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to inflame public discourse and encourage street protests. For example, during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests (as a classic example of suicidal empathy in action), CCP state media and influence networks amplified narratives that portrayed the United States as racially oppressive and chaotic. Pro-CCP actors on social media posed as American activists to escalate calls for defunding police and radical reforms, aiming to prolong disorder and erode public faith in law enforcement and American institutions in general.

The CCP also directly or indirectly funds certain activist groups that promote “woke” ideology and street protests against ICE agents and law enforcement personnel in general, while using state-backed media such as CGTN or TikTok algorithms to further amplify social discord and division among Americans.

For example, Neville Roy Singham, an American tech millionaire living in Shanghai, is allegedly the “main backer” of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (to the tune of $20 million) through nonprofits such as the Justice and Education Fund and the United Community Fund. PSL has organized nationwide protests against ICE, including the 2025 Los Angeles riots, where they were implicated in violence in the streets and civil unrest.

Singham’s pro-CCP network of radical organizations also allegedly funds the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) and The People’s Forum, which promote Marxist education and progressive causes on campuses, such as immigrant rights and anti-racism, and also support anti-ICE campus protests while promoting “woke” themes like social justice and anti-oppression.

Concluding Thoughts

Did Gad Saad hit paydirt by theorizing that the practical results of decades of putting Marxist critical theory into practice in America are—as he puts it—a “tsunami of unmodulated kindness,” “parasitized suicidal empathy,” or an “orgiastic, hyperactive form of empathy” that are undermining Western civilization?

The CCP has certainly figured that out, as its actions to spread and exacerbate chaos in America, as described above, elucidate. Whatever undermines the United States from within advances its hybrid warfare objectives and world domination goals.

What is the surest sign that the CCP understands the effectiveness—and threats of—suicidal empathy?

It is the communists who stamp out all vestiges of it in China. The CCP has historically viewed universal empathy, compassion, or spiritual beliefs among individuals as potential threats to its authority, often labeling them as “superstitions” to justify eradication, persecution, and suppression—with Falun Gong adherents and minorities (such as Tibetans, Uyghurs) as among the victims. The CCP prioritizes atheism, nationalism, and Party loyalty over individual or humanitarian concerns, subordinating empathy for individuals to collective goals.

Meanwhile, the CCP is working behind the scenes to promote suicidal empathy in America.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Las Vegas casino owner Derek Stevens is offering Canadian visitors a major incentive by accepting Canadian dollars at par with U.S. currency at his three downtown properties—Circa, D Las Vegas, and Golden Gate—through August 31, according to Bloomberg.

Because the Canadian dollar currently trades at about 1.38 to the U.S. dollar, the promotion gives Canadians an effective discount of more than 30 percent. The deal applies to hotel stays, bar tabs, and up to $500 in casino play.

The move comes as Las Vegas continues to struggle with declining tourism. Visitor numbers have fallen for 11 consecutive months, leaving the city heading into 2026 with weakened momentum. High travel costs, economic uncertainty, and strained U.S.-Canada relations have all contributed to softer demand. Local tourism officials say fewer Canadian travelers—traditionally a key market—have been a major factor.

Recent political and trade tensions have fueled calls in Canada to avoid American goods and travel, further reducing cross-border tourism. Under normal exchange rates, a Canadian bringing C$1,000 to Las Vegas would have only about $725 to spend, making trips significantly more expensive.

Stevens said the promotion is meant to rebuild those ties. In an online video, he recalled growing up near the Canadian border and seeing similar offers in the past. “I want to invite Canada back to Las Vegas,” he said.

The campaign reflects growing concern among casino operators and tourism leaders that Las Vegas must become more aggressive in attracting international visitors as it works to recover from a prolonged slowdown.

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

The Sino-Indo rapprochement is still in its infancy, their territorial disputes remain unresolved, and India is under lots of pressure from the US nowadays.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov declared during his first press conference of the year that Moscow wants to revive the Russia-India-China (RIC) format. 

In his words, “[RIC] still exists – though it has not convened in some time – but has not been disbanded. We are working to revive its activities.”

For as well-intentioned as Russia’s plans are, and they make sense since those three are the engines of the global systemic transition to multipolarity, they’re unlikely to be fulfilled for three reasons.

• First off, the incipient Sino-Indo rapprochement, which began with their leaders meeting at fall 2024’s BRICS Summit in Kazan and then again at last summer’s SCO Summit in Tianjin, is still in its infancy, revolving mostly around restrained rhetoric towards their unresolved territorial disputes and increased trade. Bilateral ties are moving in the right direction but they’re nowhere near resuming anything resembling the strategic cooperation that their leaders’ participation in another RIC Summit would imply.

• The next point is that their unresolved territorial disputes place domestic pressure upon Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to eschew the aforesaid cooperation until they’re settled, ideally in India’s favor with China rescinding its claims and withdrawing from Indian-claimed territory. Meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping twice in as many years was already a bold move in this domestic political context, but resuming strategic cooperation absent a resolution of their disputes might be a bridge too far.

• And finally, India is also under lots of pressure from the US nowadays, which is due to Trump’s punitive tariffs on the pretext of India’s continued import of Russian oil and the US’ rapid rapprochement with its Pakistani nemesis. Participating in newly revived RIC talks with Putin and Xi amidst the ongoing Indo-US talks at this very sensitive moment could potentially provoke Trump and might thus lead to a further worsening of their ties. It would therefore be very surprising if Modi were to agree to this anytime soon.

Having explained the three reasons why Russia’s planned revival of the RIC format is unlikely, it nevertheless shouldn’t be ruled out that their respective leaders might meet on the sidelines of this year’s BRICS Summit in India and/or the SCO Summit in Kyrgyzstan. Something as superficial as them being photographed chatting with one another there could suffice as alleged proof that Russia is making progress on this goal even if their small talk has no significance beyond positive optics.

Such was the case on the sidelines of last year’s SCO Summit in Tianjin, which was interpreted by some as an “informal RIC meet” despite nothing of substance being discussed. Russia and the Alt-Media Community, both in general but especially the “Non-Russian Pro-Russians” therein, have an interest in presenting such talks as proof of RIC’s revival for ideological reasons. Premature declarations of this can lead to unrealistic expectations, however, which risk deep disappointment if this never actually happens.

All in all, multipolar processes would further accelerate to the benefit of the World Majority if RIC were revived, but this is unlikely to happen due to the complexity of Sino-Indo relations and US pressure upon India right now. Given the reasonable limits of Russian diplomacy, namely its representatives’ respectful unwillingness to share unsolicited solutions for resolving the Sino-Indo border disputes and inability to influence Indo-US ties, Lavrov’s goal of reviving RIC will probably remain unfulfilled for the time being.

The precious metals complex resumed its upward trajectory overnight. Shortly after the US equity cash open, silver surged above $100 per ounce for the first time on record, while gold approached the $5,000 per ounce level.

As Rick Privorotsky, head of Delta One at Goldman Sachs, noted to clients earlier, flows suggest some speculative participation, but the dominant driver remains structural: “There is clearly hot money involved, but first and foremost gold is a central bank trade… a slow erosion of the dollar’s exorbitant privilege rather than a sudden loss of confidence…”

What first came to mind as silver broke above the $100 level was Warren Buffett’s late-1990s bet on the precious metal. Berkshire Hathaway accumulated 129.7 million ounces of physical silver, or about 4,000 metric tons, ahead of the Dot Com bubble crash. The position was disposed of around 2006, generating a substantial profit for Berkshire.

Fast forward to October 2024, and we rolled out the ZeroHedge silver/gold coins and bars. At the time, silver was in the low $30s, while gold hovered around $2,600.

But on an even grander scale, several months later in early 2025, David Bateman, the founder of Entrata, revealed on X that he had purchased “close to a billion dollars in precious metals over the past six months.”

To be exact, Bateman told his followers on X that he bought “1.5% of the annual global silver supply (12.69 million ounces).”

His reasons for the massive physical trade were as follows:

• The global monetary system is about to collapse (The Great Reset, or Basel Endgame).

• The biggest credit bubble in history will soon pop ($300T).

• There is no way the US can refinance its $28T in maturing treasuries in the next 4 years without an obscene amount of printing.

• Trump tariffs are hastening the collapse, and it’s by design.

• Gold and silver are the only meaningful life raft. Physical possession is everything.

• The whole world right now is a sophisticated game of musical chairs; the chairs are precious metals.

• Crypto is a psyop. Those who purchase will have no chair when the music stops.

• Real estate, crypto, stocks and bonds will all lose significantly compared to precious metals.

• The banking system has been meticulously designed to seize your assets to buoy up a collapsing banking sector (see The Great Taking). You have ZERO counter party risk with precious metals.

Bateman posted an image of silver bars loaded onto heavy-duty pallets when he addressed his X followers about what he described as the trade of a lifetime.

Earlier today, shortly after silver jumped above $100. He posted on X, “Congrats everyone on $100 silver. Couldn’t have happened to a better group of degenerate mildly autistic misfits.”

Congrats everyone on $100 silver. Couldn’t have happened to a better group of degenerate mildly autistic misfits 🥂

— David Bateman (@davidbateman) January 23, 2026

Bateman’s trade could easily be up more than 250%, though he did not disclose his cost basis at the time. Either way, it stands out as one heck of a trade. As for readers who purchased ZeroHedge coins and bars of gold and silver, the hedge has clearly paid off.

Authored by Paul Sperry via American Greatness,

In the run-up to the 2016 Democratic Party convention, FBI Director James Comey gained access to at least eight thumb drives containing large volumes of former Secretary Hillary Clinton’s sensitive State Department emails—as well as some from President Obama—that appeared to have been compromised by foreign hackers.

Instead of investigating the explosive new batch of evidence revealed in recently declassified documents, Comey rushed ahead to close an investigation into whether Clinton improperly transmitted and received classified material from a private, unsecured server she kept in her basement. Comey also took the extraordinary step of bypassing the attorney general and personally exonerating Clinton of wrongdoing during an unusual press conference on July 5, 2016.

Just hours later, Obama invited Clinton—who would be formally nominated as the Democrats’ standard bearer three weeks later—aboard Air Force One to help launch her multicity campaign tour, during which he officially endorsed Clinton as his preferred White House successor. “I’m ready to pass the baton,” Obama declared, as he stumped for her for the first time.

Comey’s decision to remove the cloud of scandal over Clinton’s campaign, allowing the president to get on with the business of campaigning for her, is just one avenue of investigation the Justice Department is pursuing in wide-ranging probes whose targets include a figure largely unscathed by his era’s scandals: former President Barack Obama.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said prosecutors are investigating, among other things, “possible coordination between the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.”

Jason Reding Quiñones, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, has impaneled a grand jury to hear evidence related to an alleged “grand criminal conspiracy” by Obama and Biden officials to enlist law enforcement and intelligence agencies in rigging elections and carrying out political espionage against Donald Trump.

The fate of these investigations is still unclear. Actions against former presidents—especially for conduct in office—have been exceedingly rare, with the exception of President Trump. And the courts have pushed back on the Trump administration’s recent efforts to indict other Obama-era figures, including Comey.

Nevertheless, a RealClearInvestigations look at the evidence Trump administration prosecutors are presenting to the grand jury, which includes a raft of recently declassified CIA and FBI documents, shows Obama’s deep involvement in both protecting Clinton and advancing the conspiracy theory that Trump conspired with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Drawing from thousands of pages of documents and exclusive interviews with law enforcement and intelligence officials, RCI’s analysis shows the former president was repeatedly at the center of events surrounding both the closing of the Clinton investigation and the subsequent opening of several investigations targeting the Trump campaign. Post-election, Obama also ordered the manufacturing of anti-Trump intelligence, which set Trump’s presidency up for continued investigations.

On the Tarmac

Airports played an outsized role in the 2016 election. It was former President Bill Clinton’s June 27 meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on his parked plane at a Phoenix airport that reportedly convinced Comey that Lynch might appear compromised and that he should go around the proper charging officer for federal crimes to clear his wife.

About a week later, Obama signaled the all-clear after Comey’s press conference by inviting Hillary Clinton to fly to campaign rallies on Air Force One.

“I’m here today because I believe in Hillary Clinton,” Obama said during their July 5, 2016, rally in Charlotte, N.C. “I have had a front-row seat to her judgment and her commitment.”

Some presidential security experts and Secret Service sources contacted by RCI said the timing of the trip was suspicious.

They point out that the president authorizing Clinton to fly aboard Air Force One on the same day his hand-picked FBI director absolved her of crimes was almost certainly not a last-minute decision because it would have required extensive pre-planning.

“The security involved in setting up that tour took weeks of advance work, which means Obama knew she was going to be cleared and not charged,” said a veteran Secret Service official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. “Obama wasn’t going to risk endorsing her and joining her on the campaign trail without her first being cleared of federal crimes,” he added. “He knew about the end of the investigation well ahead of time.”

Although the FBI did not interview Clinton about her emails until July 2, 2016, Comey had been circulating drafts of his exoneration statement at FBI headquarters for months and conveying to agents there was an “extraordinary sense of urgency” to complete the investigation, according to the declassified documents released recently by the Justice Department. Critics note that the reasoning he offered for clearing Clinton in his July 5 statement was rife with contradictions. “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information,” Comey said, “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”

It is not known if any of the drafts were shared with the White House. Secret Service entry logs show Comey visited with Obama at least three times in 2016. “The timing and presumption that Clinton would eventually be the Democratic Party nominee for President was part of the defendant’s decision-making process,” according to court papers the DOJ filed in November detailing why it alleges Comey predetermined Clinton’s innocence.

Pulling Punches

The new evidence suggests that Comey wasn’t acting alone. It indicates that Obama was more involved in the Clinton probe than previously reported and that Comey, whose entire family supported Clinton, may have pulled his punches to placate the incumbent president and avoid getting on the wrong side of the woman he assumed would be Obama’s successor.

The recently declassified appendix of a 2018 report from the DOJ’s inspector general reviewing the integrity of the FBI’s investigation of Clinton found that the FBI never searched the eight thumb drives containing thousands of unexamined Clinton emails that were “exfiltrated” by foreign actors. Comey was first briefed about the cache of new evidence in May 2016 when he had begun drafting his exoneration statement, and then again a week before he unilaterally exonerated Clinton.

FBI lawyers admitted in internal written memos, also recently declassified, that the information was necessary to conduct a “thorough and complete investigation” and “assess the national security risks” associated with the breaches from Clinton’s use of a private email server, which cyber-forensic analysts had already found contained at least 2,063 classified emails, some at the “Top Secret/Special Access Program” level. They also thought it was necessary to divine “the full scope of unauthorized disclosure of classified emails found on the former Secretary’s server and to identify any potential cyber intrusions of the server.”

“They got some thumb drives that dealt with all these issues, [and] they didn’t even bother to go through [them],” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley. “It was a complete cover-up.”

The appendix also reveals Democratic National Committee communications suggesting that Obama’s attorney general, Lynch, was secretly in communication with the Clinton campaign during the probe of her emails and had assured campaign officials that the FBI would go easy on her.

According to the communications, which U.S. intelligence analysts determined were “not fabrications,” Obama was putting “pressure” on Comey through Lynch to get rid of Clinton’s email scandal as early as January 2016. Not long after, Comey began drafting his statement exonerating Clinton—months before FBI agents had ended their investigation.

In her 2018 congressional deposition, Lynch testified that she never obstructed the probe or exerted any influence over it. But she has acknowledged that she had spoken to Comey about diminishing the probe’s significance by referring to the email investigation in the press as a “matter,” not an investigation. Lynch did not respond to requests for comment sent to her law firm.

DNC communications from March 2016 revealed that Obama also “sanctioned the use of administrative levers” to scuttle the FBI’s investigation of the Clinton Foundation. Recently declassified FBI documents show that around the same time, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe had ordered field agents to back off their investigation of Clinton Foundation donors and former Secretary of State Clinton as part of a possible pay-for-play scheme. McCabe did not respond to requests for comment sent to his attorney and to George Mason University, where he is a visiting professor.

(Just months earlier, McCabe and his wife Jill met with Virginia’s then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton ally, was at the governor’s mansion in Richmond to discuss raising money for Mrs. McCabe’s state senate race. The Clinton machine ended up pumping more than $675,000 into Jill McCabe’s Democratic campaign. McAuliffe had long maintained a seat on the Clinton Foundation board. RCI has learned, furthermore, that before moving to the D.C. area, the McCabes were 15-year neighbors of the Clintons in the hamlet of Chappaqua, N.Y., according to property records.)

Then, on July 20, just five days before the start of the Democratic National Convention, FBI headquarters shut down the Clinton Foundation investigation. “Based on the [political] sensitivities surrounding the Clinton Foundation,” a just-declassified internal FBI document reveals, agents were suddenly barred from issuing subpoenas, conducting interviews, or sharing bank information related to the case with other offices. HQ warned field offices to avoid creating “any impression we are investigating the Clinton Foundation or the Clintons.”

RCI made several requests for comment to Comey and Obama. Comey declined comment through his attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, who successfully defended him against federal perjury and obstruction charges. The DOJ is appealing the case, which was dismissed by a Clinton-appointed judge, not on the merits, but on the grounds that the federal prosecutor who indicted him had not been appointed properly. Obama’s Washington office declined comment.

At the time, the White House insisted it had no prior knowledge of Comey’s decisions.

Trump, who was on the verge of accepting the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, did not buy it. He accused Obama and Comey of running a “rigged” investigation of his Democratic opponent.

“It was no accident that charges were not recommended against Hillary the exact same day as President Obama campaigns with her for the first time,” Trump said on July 5, 2016.

Unbeknownst to Trump, July 5 would loom large for another reason: On the very day Obama’s FBI cleared Clinton, it set its sights on him.

Using the FBI To Smear Trump

That day, the bureau received the first in a series of false reports alleging Trump conspired with Russia. The reports, authored by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, then working as an FBI informant, were funded by Clinton’s campaign.

Weeks later, President Obama was personally warned by the CIA that the Clinton campaign was planning to create a foreign espionage scandal falsely tying Trump to Russia to distract attention from her own espionage investigation involving her use of a private server to transmit classified emails.

A declassified memo revealed that Clinton had personally approved a plan to “smear” and “demonize” Trump as a Putin stooge,  which was proposed by one of her foreign policy advisers, Julianne Smith, who had previously served as Vice President Joe Biden’s deputy security adviser. Clinton’s campaign manager, Robbie Mook, later testified in Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation that Clinton personally approved a plan to claim Trump had a back-channel to Putin through a Russian bank—an assertion that proved utterly baseless. “We discussed it with Hillary,” Mook told a D.C. court in 2022. “She agreed with the decision.”

According to the document, Smith said that the FBI, where Clinton had “supporters,” would help pour fuel on “the fire,” suggesting foreknowledge of the coming Russiagate investigation, which had not yet been formally opened. She added that they would also get help from the “IC,” or intelligence community, where Clinton had a lot of “sympathizers.”

Strikingly, there appeared to be an understanding among Clinton campaign aides that the FBI and CIA would get involved in an effort to kneecap Trump well before such an effort manifested in an official capacity.

In addition, the campaign solicited help directly from the White House.

In a July 25 text-message exchange with another Clinton adviser, Smith reached out to a special assistant to the president and National Security Council member for information about an “investigation” into Russia and Trump. “She went as far as she could” in divulging sensitive information, Smith told the other adviser. Sources say the Obama aide is believed to be Celeste Wallander, who at the time was also senior director for Russia and Eurasia on the National Security Council. Smith indicated she also contacted the “OVP,” or office of the vice president.

Smith told Durham she did not “specifically remember any such idea” to spread dirt on Trump. Wallander did not reply to requests for comment when contacted at her new position as executive director of the University of Pennsylvania’s office in Washington.

Grassley said that the new evidence, which he has fought for years to declassify, provides additional proof that “the Clinton campaign believed elements of the Obama administration would help them achieve their political ends against Trump.”

The plan to tie Trump to Russia went prime time during the DNC convention, held from July 25 to July 28.

During his nationally televised convention speech on July 27, Biden warned, “We cannot elect a man who belittles our closest allies, while embracing dictators like Vladimir Putin.” Obama pitched in during his own speech the following night, claiming that Trump “cozies up to Putin.”

Comey also knew about Clinton’s plan to manufacture a smear campaign against Trump, according to Durham. Yet on July 31, 2016, he approved the opening of the code-named “Crossfire Hurricane” espionage investigation of the Trump campaign for alleged—and since-disproven—collusion with Russia. Three months later, Comey even obtained a wiretap to spy on one of Trump’s campaign advisers, Carter Page, based almost entirely on the false allegations in the Clinton-funded Steele dossier.

The Russia probe was headed by Peter Strzok, the same FBI counterintelligence official who led the Clinton email probe. Internal FBI communications strongly suggest Strzok plotted to take a hard line against Trump.

On July 31, Strzok texted FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who worked directly under Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe, to discuss the difference in the two investigations. He emphasized that the Trump case mattered more than the Clinton case, and suggested that the FBI merely checked the boxes in its investigation of Clinton.

“[D]amn this feels momentous. Because this matters. The other one did, too, but that was to ensure we didn’t F something up. This matters because this MATTERS,” Strzok said. “So super glad to be on this voyage with you.”

“White House Is Running This”

Strzok would soon learn he was the nominal head of the investigation. On. Aug. 3, Obama met with Biden, Comey, and several other officials inside the White House to discuss the Clinton plan to link Trump and Putin, according to declassified records.

The next day, Strzok attended a meeting with CIA officials as part of an interagency group on Russia and Trump created by then-CIA Director John Brennan. Known as the “fusion cell,” the group was quarterbacked by CIA official Elizabeth “Liz” Vogt.

The following day, Strzok texted his FBI partner Page about the meeting. “Went well, best we could have expected,” he said, though he seemed annoyed to hear his investigation was under the control of the president. “Other than Liz’s quote, ‘the White House is running this,’” he added.

Nonetheless, their goals were aligned: Help Hillary Clinton, hurt Donald Trump.

Strzok and Page had earlier agreed to aggressively probe Trump to “stop” him from being president, in contrast to the softball approach they endeavored to take investigating Clinton. “One more thing: [Clinton] may be our next president,” Page wrote Strzok. “The last thing you need [is] going in there loaded for bear.”

“Agreed,” Strzok replied, before interviewing Clinton.

Both Strzok and Page have been subpoenaed by the recently impaneled federal grand jury hearing conspiracy evidence.

Instead of alerting the Trump campaign about the bureau’s concerns, Strzok dusted off the rarely used law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, to open additional espionage cases targeting Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort (code-named “Crossfire Fury”), George Papadopoulos (“Crossfire Typhoon”), and Carter Page (“Crossfire Dragon”).

The following week, he used FARA to open another counterintelligence case on Trump national security adviser, Michael Flynn, under the code name “Crossfire Razor.”

In a Sept. 2, 2016, text exchange, Page wrote Strzok that she was preparing talking points for Comey to brief Obama on their progress because “Potus [President of the United States] wants to know everything we’re doing.”

Also, Obama appeared to be directing political strategy for the Democratic ticket from the White House.

In October 2016, Clinton’s running mate Tim Kaine was caught on video saying Obama had called him the prior night to warn him Trump was in bed with “fascist” Putin. In a conversation captured in the 2020 documentary “Hillary,” Kaine said the president demanded he and Clinton go hard on Trump: “Tim, remember, this is no time to be a purist. You’ve got to keep a fascist out of the White House.” Clinton is overheard saying, “I echo that sentiment,” and hints at a nefarious relationship between Trump and Russia.

A little more than a week before the election, Comey reluctantly reopened Clinton’s email case—a controversial decision he made only after New York FBI agent John Robertson blew the whistle on headquarters trying to “bury” the discovery a month earlier of more than 300,000 new Clinton State Department emails he found on a laptop Clinton confidante Huma Abedin shared with her then-husband, Anthony Weiner, a former Democratic lawmaker from New York, as RCI first reported.

“The only reason Comey reopened the investigation is that the New York office threatened to bypass FBI headquarters and go straight to the Department of Justice regarding the additional emails that were discovered as a result of the Weiner [sex crimes] investigations,” former prosecutor and assistant FBI Director Chris Swecker said in an RCI interview.

Around the same time, McCabe denied field agents potentially valuable evidence from the Weiner laptop that could have justified reopening their Clinton Foundation probes, recently declassified FBI records also reveal.

Obama Doubles Down

After Trump defeated Clinton the following month, Obama doubled down, ordering U.S. intelligence agencies to revisit their prior assessments that found no evidence the Russian government tried to hack the election for Trump.

Within just three weeks of Obama’s Dec. 9 order, the CIA came up with new evidence to conclude Putin personally launched an influence operation to help swing the race to Trump. The publicly released version of the assessment, which helped Obama and Clinton explain her shocking defeat, hid the fact that the CIA relied in part on the Clinton-funded dossier to reach its new conclusion.

Intelligence contradicting the “key judgment” that Putin helped Trump win was omitted from the assessment, known as the ICA. Career analysts objected to using the dossier, but Obama’s CIA chief Brennan overruled them. At least one senior intelligence analyst, now a whistleblower cooperating with the DOJ in its ongoing investigation of the entire scandal, said he was “threatened” by superiors to change his pre-election assessment to suggest Putin stole the election for Trump.

The Obama White House even prevented analysts preparing the new assessment from seeing the incriminating so-called Clinton Plan intelligence that exposed the plot to frame Trump as a Russian conspirator. In denying ICA drafters access to the intel, the White House spuriously claimed it was withholding the material “on grounds of executive privilege,” according to a secret congressional report that debunked the intelligence behind the ICA. (The explosive 2018 report had been locked in a safe at CIA headquarters until its declassification and release in July.)

On Dec. 15, 2016, weeks before the assessment had been finalized, Obama let it slip out in an NPR “exit interview” at the White House that his intelligence team had essentially predetermined the conclusion of the Trump-Russia assessment.

He said that no one should be “surprised by the CIA assessment that this [Russian meddling in the election] was done purposely to improve Trump’s chances [of winning].” Obama even suggested that Putin “was helping the Trump campaign.”

“So what the CIA is now assessing—which was, it was done purposefully to tilt the election in the direction of a particular candidate—shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody,” Obama added.

Standing in the wings, Susan Rice, the president’s national security adviser, sent Obama back into the room following the interview to reassert that the assessment was still under review.

“You had something to add?” asked NPR’s Steve Inskeep.

“It is worth noting that when it comes to the motivations of the Russians, there are still a whole range of assessments taking place among the agencies,” a clearly chagrined Obama said, his voice cracking. “And so when I receive a final report, you know, we’ll be able to, I think, give us a comprehensive and best guess as to those motivations.”

He stressed that “different agencies are still looking at all that stuff, gathering it together and hopefully putting [it] into a single package.” In fact, only three of the 17 intelligence agencies were involved in the process—the CIA, FBI, and NSA—and only five analysts drafted the final intel report, all of whom were handpicked by Obama’s CIA Director Brennan, who previously worked for Obama in the White House.

Obama’s intelligence czar, James Clapper, later revealed in a 2018 interview that the Obama-ordered assessment set off a chain of investigations targeting Trump and his administration over Russia.

“If it weren’t for President Obama, we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set up a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today, notably, Special Counsel [Robert] Mueller’s investigation,” Clapper told CNN. “President Obama is responsible for that.”

Recently declassified emails reveal that after taking his marching orders from Obama, Clapper pressured the NSA, which had partially dissented from the key judgment that Putin personally intervened in the election to help Trump, to get “on the same page” and be “supportive” of the conclusion. He suggested they would all have to “compromise” their normal standards for intelligence-gathering to rush out the report to meet Obama’s deadline.

Sen. Grassley was even more emphatic: “There’s no doubt the new intelligence assessment was a political hit that had been ordered by President Obama.”

Both Clapper and Brennan have been told by federal prosecutors they are “targets” of investigation and have been subpoenaed by the grand jury looking at conspiracy charges. In a letter from his attorney, Brennan said he has cooperated with the probe, turning over documents requested for the period July 2016 to February 2017. Brennan said he stands by the ICA and complained he is the target of a “manufactured criminal investigation.” Attempts to reach Clapper for comment were unsuccessful.

Oval Office Planning Session

The first week in January 2017 was a busy time at the Obama White House.

On Jan. 5, Obama and Biden held an Oval Office meeting with Comey and other officials during which they discussed using the Logan Act, a little-used 18th-century law that criminalizes efforts by private citizens to conduct American foreign policy, against Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Later that month, Comey dispatched Strzok to the West Wing to ambush Flynn in an interview that would set a perjury trap leading to Flynn’s ouster and indictment on charges that were later dropped.

More significantly, they also discussed a plan to confront President-elect Trump with false allegations from the Steele dossier, which Comey presented as “intelligence.” On Jan. 6, Comey briefed Trump on Russia-related allegations, including those in the now-debunked Steele dossier—the same day the administration released an unclassified version of the ICA to the public.

Comey’s private briefing with Trump was later leaked to the press, lending credence to the dossier and giving Washington journalists official cover to publicize its transparently bogus rumors, starting with Buzzfeed, which published the entire Steele Dossier on Jan. 10.

On Jan. 12, still under the direction of the Obama administration, Comey also sought the renewal of a wiretap warrant to continue spying on Trump adviser Carter Page as a suspected “Russian agent”—the same day the bureau received an intelligence report warning of false information in the dossier that had put Page under suspicion. And Comey knew by that point the dossier was based on fabrications by Steele’s paid “primary subsource.”

Later that month, Comey’s investigators learned while interviewing Igor Danchenko, a former Brookings Institution analyst who worked as Steele’s primary researcher, that key allegations in the dossier were nothing more than “bar talk.” Comey nonetheless approved the affidavit—underpinned by those same dossier lies—to electronically eavesdrop on Page for another 90 days.

“With all these red lights flashing STOP, the Obama administration went full speed ahead,” Grassley said.

Some former prosecutors see a conspiracy in the unequal investigative treatment of Clinton and Trump, and they place Obama at the center of it.

“There are reasonable grounds for an investigation to determine if this was part of a broader conspiracy to protect Hillary Clinton and influence the election by smearing Trump at the same time,” said Swecker, a former prosecutor and top FBI official.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt Obama was the mastermind behind the whole conspiracy,” he told RCI. “The problem is proving it.”

Trump leveled similar allegations last year, even going so far as to accuse the 44th president of “treason.” Obama spokesman Patrick Rodenbush dismissed the accusations as “bizarre” and “ridiculous.”

Hannah Hankins, now acting spokesperson for Obama’s post-presidency office, told RCI, “I won’t have anything new to add for this story.”