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espionage

Canada Election Monitor Detects PRC Cyber-Attacks on Liberal Leadership Candidate Freeland

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5 minute read

 Sam Cooper

The evolving nature of these operations may signal a broader effort to influence not only Canada’s general elections but also to shape the selection of the country’s next unelected Prime Minister.

Canada’s election security watchdog has uncovered a coordinated disinformation campaign linked to the People’s Republic of China targeting Chrystia Freeland, a leading candidate against Mark Carney for the Liberal Party leadership.

A statement released Friday by the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force (SITE) revealed that the digital attack was launched on WeChat, a dominant Chinese social media platform, and amplified through at least 30 accounts linked to pro-Beijing influence networks. Experts have previously identified these sources as aligned with PRC-backed information operations.

Freeland has faced some pressure within Liberal circles for asserting that Carney is the favored candidate of Trudeau’s elite staff and the Liberal establishment, after making the statements in a CBC interview.

SITE has briefed the Liberal Party’s executive and Freeland’s campaign team on its findings, emphasizing that it will continue monitoring foreign digital threats that seek to manipulate Canada’s democratic process.

“We will continue to monitor the digital information environment for foreign information manipulation and shine a light on hostile foreign state-backed information operations,” SITE said.

The findings recall a similar interference effort detected during the 2021 federal election, as documented in evidence before the Hogue Commission. At the time, analysts determined that an online disinformation campaign had sought to discourage Canadians of Chinese heritage from supporting the Conservative Party and its leader, Erin O’Toole. The campaign particularly targeted Kenny Chiu, the former Conservative candidate for Steveston-Richmond East, falsely portraying him as anti-China in a coordinated messaging effort across WeChat and Chinese-language media.

In both cases—the 2021 campaign against Conservative candidates and the emerging attack on Freeland—SITE observed coordinated messaging patterns originating from WeChat accounts and Chinese-language news sources tied to Beijing.

During the 2021 election, SITE assessed that false narratives about Chiu and the Conservative Party were widely circulated through WeChat, Douyin (TikTok’s Chinese counterpart), and other digital platforms. Three of the first Chinese-language news accounts to spread the false claims were members of a media partnership with China News Service, a PRC state-run agency operating under the United Front Work Department, Beijing’s key overseas influence arm.

SITE’s findings suggest a similar strategy may now be in play, with Freeland’s leadership campaign becoming a new focal point for online manipulation. The disinformation campaign generated significant engagement, with WeChat articles attacking Freeland drawing more than 140,000 interactions between January 29 and February 3, 2025. SITE estimates between two to three million WeChat users globally may have been exposed to the narratives. The false claims appear to have originated from WeChat’s most popular news account, an anonymous blog previously linked by experts at China Digital Times to Beijing’s influence network, according to SITE’s statement.

SITE’s analysis suggests PRC-linked actors may have viewed the 2021 effort as successful, particularly given the defeat of Chiu and other Conservative candidates in ridings with large Chinese-Canadian populations. If Beijing perceived that operation as effective, it could explain why a similar approach is now targeting an internal leadership race within the governing Liberal Party.

The evolving nature of these operations may signal a broader effort to influence not only Canada’s general elections but also its leadership contests—ultimately shaping the selection of the country’s next unelected Prime Minister.

This story is developing. The Bureau will provide further updates as more details emerge.

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espionage

Why has President Trump not released the JFK, Jeffrey Epstein files?

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From LifeSiteNews

By Stephen Kokx

Kash Patel, the new head of the FBI, and Pam Bondi, Trump’s Attorney General, have failed to deliver on a promise to shake things up, leading to concerns that the public might never get the truth.

It has been over a week since GOP Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna announced the launch of a website designed to share new files related to the assassination of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

Luna was tapped by the Trump administration to act as the head of a “task force” to oversee their rollout.

Why the files couldn’t have been made public at all once without a team of overseers is a question many people are asking.

As each day of Trump’s second (and last) term passes, an increasing number of conservatives are getting upset, and not just with Luna but with Trump himself given that very little new data has been made public about JFK’s death.

Kash Patel, the new head of the FBI, and Pam Bondi, Trump’s Attorney General, have both been on the receiving end of criticism lately. And for good reason. Both of them made huge promises to shake things up. Bondi’s failure to deliver on the Jeffrey Epstein files is particularly shameful.

Tucker Carlson broached the subject with former CNN host Chris Cuomo this week.

“There’s clearly information in those files that are going to make the CIA look bad,” Cuomo argued.

“Just the CIA?” Carlson cryptically shot back.

Carlson explained that he knows “a member of the Senate Intel Committee” who told the Trump team that they simply could not hire a particular person that they wanted to because that person would “push for the release of the JFK files.”

Cotton has since denied that allegation.

“Completely false … I’ve never objected to someone taking office because of their position on the JFK files,” he told Fox’s Bret Baier.

Whatever the truth is, the American public is yet again not getting what was promised.

Which raises the question: Why? What is it about JFK and the Epstein files that requires so much scrutiny? What do they contain that is so dangerous?

Bondi was asked that question in not so many words on Fox recently. She told Sean Hannity that parts of the Epstein files will likely be redacted for “national security” concerns.

This is what has been said for decades. It is what the Deep State has always said.

It indicates — as Carlson told Cuomo during their conversation — that “enormous pressure” is being brought on intel officials to not do what they said they were going to.

But which interest group in the U.S. even has that amount of influence? Surely only one that can pressure both Democrat and Republican presidents.

In a podcast Carlson released in January, former Washington Post reporter Jeffrey Morley had high hopes for Trump’s executive order, which he hailed as a “great development.”

But he also warned that “if we don’t get documents in 30 days … then it’s gone off the rails.”

It is safe to say that things have “gone off the rails.”

At the end of Carlson and Morley’s conversation, the two discussed the lesser-known fact that Kennedy was adamant about having inspections of Israel’s Dimona nuclear power plant. They also recalled how he was seeking to have the American Zionist Council (later the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee) register as a foreign entity.

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Stephen Kokx is a journalist for LifeSiteNews.

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Daily Caller

All Epstein Files Are In, Attorney General Reveals What Will Go Public Starting Thursday

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Hailey Gomez

If something’s redacted, you will know the line, and you will know why it’s redacted, the victim’s name, identifying information of a victim.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Monday evening on Fox News that the thousands of withheld files on deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein are now in the hands of the FBI, adding certain redactions will be made, with an explanation provided for each one.

The Department of Justice released the first phase of “The Epstein Files” — an over 100-page document — on Thursday, but it failed to contain a majority of new information, sparking controversy online. On “Hannity,” Fox’s Sean Hannity addressed the controversy, asking Bondi for her response. She said she had been informed fewer than 24 hours before the release that “there were way more documents that they were supposed to turn over.”

“You’re looking at these documents going, ‘These aren’t all the Epstein files.’ There were flight logs, there were names, victims’ names, and we’re going, ‘Where’s the rest of the stuff?’ That’s what the FBI had turned over to us,” Bondi said. “So a source said, ‘Whoa, all this evidence is sitting in the Southern District of New York.’ So based on that, I gave them the deadline, Friday at 8, a truckload of evidence arrived.”

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“It’s now in the possession of the FBI. Kash is going to get me, and himself really, a detailed report as to why all these documents and evidence had been withheld,” Bondi added. “We’re going to go through it, go through it as fast as we can, but go through it very cautiously to protect all the victims of Epstein, because there are a lot of victims.”

Before the release of “Phase One,” Bondi told Fox News last Wednesday that the DOJ would be releasing “some” of the files by Thursday, hoping the public would see “a lot of flight logs, a lot of names, a lot of information.” However, the DOJ and Trump administration faced pushback online after conservative influencers obtained a binder labeled “The Epstein Files: Phase 1.” Some of those influencers were seen smiling and holding it up outside the West Wing.

WATCH:

Hannity pressed Bondi about additional potential redactions in the files.

“National security, some grand jury information, which is always going to be confidential, but we’ll see. Let’s look through them as fast as we can. Get it out to the American people, because the American people have a right to know,” Bondi said. “Not only on that, but on Kennedy, on Martin Luther King, on all of these cases that the Biden administration has just sat on for all these years.”

“It’s really — it’s not sad. It’s infuriating that these people thought that they could sit on this information, but they can’t,” Bondi said. “And when we redact things, Sean, what we’re going to do is not just pull pages out like they used to do. If something’s redacted, you will know the line, and you will know why it’s redacted, the victim’s name, identifying information of a victim.”

Epstein was arrested and charged in 2019 with sex trafficking, only later to be found dead in his New York Metropolitan Correctional Center cell a month after his arrest. Since his death, Republicans, including Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, have called for the full, unredacted records of Epstein to be released to the public, which includes his infamous flight log.

After the release of phase one, Bondi requested that the FBI deliver the remaining documents to the DOJ by Friday at 8 a.m., tasking newly confirmed FBI Director Kash Patel with investigating “why the request for all documents was not followed.”

“We believe in transparency, and America has the right to know. The Biden administration sat on these documents. No one did anything with them. Why were they sitting in the Southern District of New York? I want a full report on that,” Bondi said.

“Sadly, these people don’t believe in transparency, but I think more, unfortunately, I think a lot of them don’t believe in honesty,” Bondi added. “It’s a new day. It’s a new administration, and everything’s going to come out to the public. The public has a right to know. Americans have a right to know.”

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