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Kamala’s Secret Weapon: The British Operatives Determined to “Kill” Elon Musk’s Free Speech Platform X

Published

1 year ago

13 minute read

From Reclaim The Net

By Christina Maas

If you’re tired of censorship and surveillance, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

Amid the chaos of pre-election America, major information has surfaced, revealing internal documents from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). This UK-based group, which was founded by British political strategist Morgan McSweeney under the name Brixton Endeavours Limited before being renamed to the Center for Countering Digital Hate in 2019, outlined a clear goal in their agenda: “Kill Musk’s Twitter.” The documents make it clear that the CCDH is targeting Elon Musk’s social media platform with full force. McSweeney, who helped guide Keir Starmer to victory in the UK, is now involved in US politics, advising Kamala Harris as she navigates the upcoming election, raising serious questions about the CCDH’s reach and motives.

CCDH May 31st agenda, above a note about meeting “with [Senator Amy] Klobuchar’s team.”

Now, if you’re wondering why a think tank founded by a man who helped turn Keir Starmer into the British Prime Minister is so dead set on smashing up a social media platform thousands of miles across the pond, you’re not alone. But the CCDH isn’t just any ragtag team of keyboard warriors. These guys are plugged into Washington power circles like an iPhone into a dodgy charger, with ties so tight to the Biden-Harris campaign, that they might as well be writing the tweets. And with McSweeney now advising Kamala Harris, well, let’s just say the plot thickens. 

Related: Behind Closed Doors: The UK and US Plot Global Speech Crackdown

Kamala’s British Wingman

Meet Morgan McSweeney, a political operative you’ve never heard of—unless you’ve been glued to British politics or, for some inexplicable reason, a hardcore Labour Party fan in America. According to a new report from The DisInformation Chronicle and Racket News (which is worth reading in full), McSweeney, the brains behind Starmer’s rise to the UK premiership, is now advising Kamala Harris on how to go from “Where’s she been?” to “First female President.”

According to the report, McSweeney is credited with piloting Starmer’s victory against the Conservatives, beating Rishi Sunak. And McSweeney recently became UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff.

But McSweeney isn’t stopping at Downing Street. No, he’s set his sights on America. And what’s more American than advising Kamala Harris after founding an organization that’s trying to vaporize Elon Musk’s $44 billion free speech project? After all, nothing screams “Democracy!” like a transatlantic political hit squad targeting Musk’s favorite free speech toy.

Musk, Misinformation, and Tax Breaks

Let’s not forget that the CCDH is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit—a status they might want to cling to tighter than a senator to their PAC funding. According to the IRS, CCDH could lose its golden goose tax exemption if “a substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation.” And yet, somehow, according to the report, “Trigger EU and UK regulatory action” is the third item on their annual to-do list.

And to make things even murkier, CCDH has hired Lot Sixteen, a firm known for lobbying congressional offices on—you guessed it—“misinformation.” Nothing screams integrity like a supposedly neutral non-profit hiring a lobbying firm to bend the ears of politicians in the world’s most corrupt zip code. It’s almost poetic, if by poetry you mean a collection of contradictory nonsense wrapped in a PR-friendly bow.

A tweet by Elon Musk stating "This is war" above another tweet by Paul D. Thacker about exclusive documents allegedly showing British advisors plotting against Musk's Twitter, with an image of two people speaking.Elon Musk reacts to the new report.

So, what does the CCDH’s fearless leader, Imran Ahmed, have to say about all this? Well, nothing, actually. Despite repeated requests from The DisInformation Chronicle and Racket, Ahmed—another British political operative welded to McSweeney’s Labour Together cabal—has clammed up. You can almost hear the sounds of frantic shredding from CCDH’s London offices.

Meanwhile, Senator Amy Klobuchar, who’s been pushing bills to regulate online “misinformation,” isn’t exactly rushing to answer questions either. And why would she? The CCDH’s plans dovetail nicely with her efforts to wrangle Big Tech under the guise of safeguarding democracy. Who cares if a few pesky details—like the potential illegalities of foreign interference or questionable nonprofit activities—get in the way? We’ve got elections to win here!

It’s almost endearing to see the British influence clawing its way back into American politics. Once upon a time, they tried to impose taxes on tea; now they’re sending think tanks to tackle free speech. If you’re wondering why a bunch of Brits are interested in who gets to say what on American soil, well, let’s just say the empire never really dies—it just switches to online servers.

The CCDH, that shiny bastion of truth-squelching, made headlines when they tried to silence Substack writers like Alex Berenson and Dr. Joseph Mercola, daring to spout the unthinkable—vaccine “misinformation.” In a world where dissent is dangerous, what’s a good digital inquisition without a few heretics to burn at the stake? But Substack threw a wrench into CCDH’s plans with the audacity to say, “No, thanks. We’re not here to take orders from the mob.” Their exact words? “At Substack, we don’t make moderation decisions based on public pressure.”

But the battle’s far from over. If at first, you don’t succeed in turning the internet into a digital police state, try again across the pond. CCDH’s new plan for American soil? Start by dismantling the platforms of opponents like Elon Musk—because if there’s one thing that irks the establishment more than free speech, it’s a billionaire who buys the bird app and starts letting people talk again. To do that, CCDH is deploying the tried-and-true tactic of hitting where it hurts: ad revenues. It’s like the financial version of waterboarding—slow, steady, and guaranteed to make you reconsider your life choices.

But they’re not stopping with the world’s richest troll. CCDH is also pushing for new regulations that would make Europe’s draconian Digital Services Act and the UK’s paternalistic Online Safety Act look like child’s play. Under these laws, an “independent digital regulator” (read: Orwellian overlord) would have the power to decide what counts as “harmful content” and hand out penalties to any platform that steps out of line. Nothing says “freedom” like letting bureaucrats decide what’s dangerous for you to read.

The Lobbying Blitz: CCDH’s Capitol Hill Campaign

Naturally, CCDH hasn’t come to the US to play nice. With Labour Together and McSweeney’s as their comrades in censorship, they’ve launched an all-out lobbying blitz on Capitol Hill. Their shiny new toy? The STAR framework is a friendly-sounding acronym that would essentially give them the ability to enforce platform censorship through government regulation. Because if you can’t silence your enemies with social media bans, why not use Congress as your personal speech police?

And don’t think for a second they’re not riding the wave of the latest moral panic. Following the riots that were oh-so-conveniently blamed on disinformation (because personal responsibility is so last century), CCDH and its allies are positioning themselves as the solution to America’s pesky free speech problem. In fact, across the Atlantic, under the would-be Prime Minister Keir Starmer, UK regulators are already sharpening their knives, threatening severe actions against any platform that refuses to fall in line with their censorship demands. You can almost hear them sharpening the guillotine from here.

Of course, all of this is framed under the noble guise of “safety.” We’ve heard it before: “We’re just trying to protect people from harm.” But when you peel back the layers of sanctimonious rhetoric, what you’re left with is a cold, calculated effort to control the narrative. If it’s not coming from the approved sources, it’s dangerous. If it challenges the establishment, it’s misinformation. And if you don’t fall in line? Well, they’ve got a regulation for that.

The Real Endgame: Speech Control

Let’s not pretend this is about safety, though. This is about power. CCDH’s push for stricter regulations, under the guise of protecting the public from harmful content, is nothing more than a naked attempt to control the flow of information. They’ve already tried it in the UK, and now they’re bringing their act to the US, hoping to use government muscle to do what public pressure alone couldn’t.

And the implications are staggering. If groups like CCDH succeed in shaping US regulations to mirror the Digital Services Act or the Online Safety Act, we’re looking at a future where platforms are forced to police speech in real-time, handing over the power to determine what’s “acceptable” to an unelected body of bureaucrats and activists. It’s not about misinformation—it’s about control. And once they’ve got that control, you can bet they won’t give it up easily.

At the end of the day, the CCDH and its allies are playing a long game. They don’t just want to silence a few Substack writers or take away Elon Musk’s ad revenue—they want to reshape the entire landscape of online discourse.

So next time you see CCDH and their cohorts talking about the dangers of misinformation and harmful content, remember: It’s not about safety. It’s about control. Because in the digital age, whoever controls the narrative controls everything.

Read the full report here.

If you’re tired of censorship and surveillance, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

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Taxing food is like slapping a surcharge on hunger. It needs to end

Published on December 20, 2025

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This article supplied by Troy Media.

Troy Media By Sylvain Charlebois

Cutting the food tax is one clear way to ease the cost-of-living crisis for Canadians

About a year ago, Canada experimented with something rare in federal policymaking: a temporary GST holiday on prepared foods.

It was short-lived and poorly communicated, yet Canadians noticed it immediately. One of the most unavoidable expenses in daily life—food—became marginally less costly.

Families felt a modest but genuine reprieve. Restaurants saw a bump in customer traffic. For a brief moment, Canadians experienced what it feels like when government steps back from taxing something as basic as eating.

Then the tax returned with opportunistic pricing, restoring a policy that quietly but reliably makes the cost of living more expensive for everyone.

In many ways, the temporary GST cut was worse than doing nothing. It opened the door for industry to adjust prices upward while consumers were distracted by the tax relief. That dynamic helped push our food inflation rate from minus 0.6 per cent in January to almost four per cent later in the year. By tinkering with taxes rather than addressing the structural flaws in the system, policymakers unintentionally fuelled volatility. Instead of experimenting with temporary fixes, it is time to confront the obvious: Canada should stop taxing food altogether.

Start with grocery stores. Many Canadians believe food is not taxed at retail, but that assumption is wrong. While “basic groceries” are zero-rated, a vast range of everyday food products are taxed, and Canadians now pay over a billion dollars a year in GST/HST on food purchased in grocery stores.

That amount is rising steadily, not because Canadians are buying more treats, but because shrinkflation is quietly pulling more products into taxable categories. A box of granola bars with six bars is tax-exempt, but when manufacturers quietly reduce the box to five bars, it becomes taxable. The product hasn’t changed. The nutritional profile hasn’t changed. Only the packaging has changed, yet the tax flips on.

This pattern now permeates the grocery aisle. A 650-gram bag of chips shrinks to 580 grams and becomes taxable. Muffins once sold in six-packs are reformatted into three-packs or individually wrapped portions, instantly becoming taxable single-serve items. Yogurt, traditionally sold in large tax-exempt tubs, increasingly appears in smaller 100-gram units that meet the definition of taxable snacks. Crackers, cookies, trail mixes and cereals have all seen slight weight reductions that push them past GST thresholds created decades ago. Inflation raises food prices; Canada’s outdated tax code amplifies those increases.

At the same time, grocery inflation remains elevated. Prices are rising at 3.4 per cent, nearly double the overall inflation rate. At a moment when food costs are climbing faster than almost everything else, continuing to tax food—whether on the shelf or in restaurants—makes even less economic sense.

The inconsistencies extend further. A steak purchased at the grocery store carries no tax, yet a breakfast wrap made from virtually the same inputs is taxed at five per cent GST plus applicable HST. The nutritional function is not different. The economic function is not different. But the tax treatment is entirely arbitrary, rooted in outdated distinctions that no longer reflect how Canadians live or work.

Lower-income households disproportionately bear the cost. They spend 6.2 per cent of their income eating outside the home, compared with 3.4 per cent for the highest-income households. When government taxes prepared food, it effectively imposes a higher burden on those often juggling two or three jobs with limited time to cook.

But this is not only about the poorest households. Every Canadian pays more because the tax embeds itself in the price of convenience, time and the realities of modern living.

And there is an overlooked economic dimension: restaurants are one of the most effective tools we have for stimulating community-level economic activity. When people dine out, they don’t just buy food. They participate in the economy. They support jobs for young and lower-income workers. They activate foot traffic in commercial areas. They drive spending in adjacent sectors such as transportation, retail, entertainment and tourism.

A healthy restaurant sector is a signal of economic confidence; it is often the first place consumers re-engage when they feel financially secure. Taxing prepared food, therefore, is not simply a tax on convenience—it is a tax on economic participation.

Restaurants Canada has been calling for the permanent removal of GST/HST on all food, and they are right. Eliminating the tax would generate $5.4 billion in consumer savings annually, create more than 64,000 foodservice jobs, add over 15,000 jobs in related sectors and support the opening of more than 2,600 new restaurants across the country. No other affordability measure available to the federal government delivers this combination of economic stimulus and direct relief.

And Canadians overwhelmingly agree. Eighty-four per cent believe food should not be taxed, regardless of where it is purchased. In a polarized political climate, a consensus of that magnitude is rare.

Ending the GST/HST on all food will not solve every affordability issue but it is one of the simplest, fairest and most effective measures the federal government can take immediately.

Food is food. The tax system should finally accept that.

Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Canadian professor and researcher in food distribution and policy. He is senior director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University and co-host of The Food Professor Podcast. He is frequently cited in the media for his insights on food prices, agricultural trends, and the global food supply chain. 

Troy Media empowers Canadian community news outlets by providing independent, insightful analysis and commentary. Our mission is to support local media in helping Canadians stay informed and engaged by delivering reliable content that strengthens community connections and deepens understanding across the country.

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Business

Deadlocked Jury Zeroes In on Alleged US$40 Million PPE Fraud in Linda Sun PRC Influence Case

Published on December 20, 2025

By

Sam Cooper's avatar Sam Cooper

A jury of New Yorkers will return to court Monday, heading into their second week of deliberations in a landmark foreign-agent and corruption trial that reaches into two governors’ offices, struggling to decide whether former state official Linda Sun secretly served Beijing’s interests while she and her husband built a small business and luxury-property empire cashing in on pandemic-era contracts as other Americans were locked down.

On Thursday — the fourth day of deliberations — the jury sent federal Judge Brian Cogan a blunt note saying they were deadlocked on the sprawling case, in which the federal government has asked jurors to accept its account of a complex web of family and Chinese-community financial transactions through which Sun and her husband allegedly secured many millions of dollars in Chinese business deals channeled through “United Front” proxies aligned with Beijing.

The defense, by contrast, argues that Sun and her husband were simply successful through legitimate, culturally familiar transactions, not any covert scheme directed by a foreign state.

“We deeply feel that no progress can be made to change any jurors’ judgment on all counts,” the panel wrote Thursday. “There are fundamental differences on the evidence and the interpretation of the law. We cannot come to a unanimous decision.”

Cogan reportedly responded with a standard “Allen charge” — an instruction often used in deadlock situations, urging jurors to keep an open mind and continue deliberating. Because a juror had to be replaced due to travel commitments, the reconstituted panel will need to restart deliberations from square one on Monday.

According to a message the U.S. Justice Department sent to The Bureau on Wednesday, the panel had already asked for transcripts from four witnesses — Sean Carroll, Mary Beth Hefner, Karen Gallacchi and Jenny Low.

Those requests underline just how dense the case is — and how much money was at stake in the pandemic-era PPE deals at the heart of several key counts. Sun and her husband, businessman Chris Hu, face 19 counts in total, including Sun acting as an unregistered foreign agent for the People’s Republic of China; visa-fraud and alien-smuggling charges tied to a 2019 Henan provincial delegation; a multimillion-dollar pandemic PPE kickback scheme; bank-fraud and identity-misuse allegations; and multiple money-laundering and tax-evasion counts.

Carroll and Hefner’s testimony is central to the government’s key procurement-corruption allegation. Prosecutors say Sun used her influence to help steer more than US$40 million in PPE contracts to companies tied to her husband in China, with an expected profit of roughly US$8 million — money they allege was partly kicked back to Sun and Hu and funneled through accounts opened in Sun’s mother’s name and via friends and relatives.

Prosecutors say the clearest money trail in the Sun case runs through New York’s COVID PPE scramble and a pair of Jiangsu-linked emails.

“What was Linda Sun’s reward for taking official action to steer these contracts through the procurement process? Millions of dollars in kickbacks or bribes. It was money that she knew would be coming her way if she pushed these contracts through,” prosecutor Alexander Solomon told jurors in closing.

He argued that in March 2020, as the pandemic hit, a Jiangsu provincial official in Albany emailed state staff, including Sun, with information on four Chinese PPE and medical suppliers — and that the next day Sun forwarded herself a second email that copied the language about two of those vendors but added a new line claiming that “High Hope comes highly recommended by the Jiangsu Department of Commerce.”

A New York State IT specialist testified that this exact phrase appears only once in the state’s entire email system, in Sun’s self-forwarded message. Prosecutors urged jurors to see it as a fabricated email.

They suggest it is one of a number of frauds and forgeries, including claims that Sun repeatedly faked Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature on invitation letters used to bring Chinese provincial officials into the United States as part of plans to build a large education complex in New York.

On the PPE dealings, prosecutors say that during a period when Sun still had broad latitude to vet vendors, she sent procurement official Sean Carroll a proposal for High Hope to supply five million masks.

Prosecutors say she did not disclose that High Hope was tied to family associate Henry Hua or that she had a financial interest in the deal, but did repeat language that the company “came recommended” by Jiangsu authorities — phrasing Carroll testified he understood as an official validation from the Chinese side.

Prosecutors then linked the High Hope contracts that moved through Carroll’s office to alleged downstream cash flows laid out in a Chris Hu spreadsheet: PPE contract money Hu recorded as owed by Jay Chen, marked as wired into an account called “Golden” and then on to “HC Paradise,” the vehicle Hu allegedly used to pay for a Hawaii property.

In the government’s telling, that is how a doctored Jiangsu government “recommendation” for High Hope ultimately turned into New York taxpayer funds helping to buy a Hawaiian condo.

As The Bureau has reported in detail, prosecutor Alexander Solomon used his closing argument to give jurors one of the clearest open-court narratives yet of how the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front allegedly seeks to shape Western politics through diaspora networks — and to argue that Sun sat at the center of such a network in Albany.

Solomon walked the panel through a cast that ran from Sun’s family and business partners in Queens to United Front–linked association bosses in New York, provincial officials in Henan and Guangdong, and senior staff at China’s New York consulate. In his account, Sun — officially feted in Beijing as an “eminent young overseas Chinese” after a 2017 political tour — became a “trusted insider” who quietly repurposed New York State letterhead, access and messaging to serve Beijing’s priorities on Taiwan, Uyghurs and trade, while keeping that relationship hidden from her own colleagues.

Among the most striking elements of the government’s case, as The Bureau reported from Solomon’s summation, were that Sun allegedly forged Hochul’s signature on multiple invitation letters that Chinese officials then used to secure U.S. visas for provincial delegations — promising meetings in Albany that, Solomon said, no one in state government had actually approved — as part of a broader push by Henan Province to anchor a major education complex in the United States.

He then tied that influence narrative to money: millions in lobster-export deals for Chris Hu, allegedly greased by Chinese officials and New York-based United Front intermediaries; coded “apple” cash drop-offs funneled through third-party accounts; and the pandemic PPE contracts.

In Solomon’s formulation, all of that adds up to clandestine agency for Beijing.

He told jurors that while Sun was boasting to Chinese consulate officials that she could treat Hochul “like her puppet,” she was acting “like an agent,” treating PRC officials as her “real bosses,” and seeking and receiving benefits. Sun kept doing so, Solomon said, even after an FBI agent warned her about the Foreign Agents Registration Act and the risks of working too closely with the consulate.

Defense lawyers for Sun and Hu, in their own summations, urged the jury to reject that picture of a couple monetizing their access to senior American politicians in order to enrich themselves through clandestine business dealings facilitated by community leaders secretly working for Beijing’s United Front units. According to the Global Investigations Review summary and other accounts, they argued that prosecutors have overreached by criminalizing ordinary diaspora politics, networking and pandemic procurement.

On the defense view, much of what the government calls “direction and control” is better understood as routine back-and-forth involving a diaspora liaison in the governor’s office and community or trade groups with ties to China. None of the government’s evidence, they argue, amounts to an agreement to operate under the “direction or control” of a foreign principal — the core FARA requirement.

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