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Is the US intelligence apparatus preparing the public for future election interference?
From LifeSiteNews
Is the warning perhaps not what it seems? Is it an attempt to provide camouflage — a strategy known as ‘pre-bunking’ — for future election interference sanctioned by the Washington political machine?
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) together with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a joint statement ostensibly intended to assure U.S. voters in advance that the 2024 election that, despite anticipated attacks on the country’s voting systems that might make getting election information hard for citizens to obtain, election results would nonetheless be unaffected and election integrity would be maintained.
The FBI is responsible for investigating and prosecuting election crimes and malicious cyber activity targeting election infrastructure. The CISA plays a role in securing election infrastructure from physical and cyber threats.
The joint statement, however, has been met with skepticism based on the earlier roles of both agencies in past elections and their participation in massive suppression of conservative voices in social media.
As such, is the warning perhaps not what it seems? Is it an attempt to provide camouflage — a strategy known as “pre-bunking” — for future election interference sanctioned by the Democrat-powered Washington political machine — a.k.a., the Deep State — that wants to maintain control of the White House and Congress at any cost?
“CISA & FBI issue bulletin that upcoming cyberattacks may ‘prevent the public from receiving timely information’ about the 2024 election,” conservative commentator Emerald Robinson wrote on X.
“These same agencies told you: America’s voting machines were never connected to the Internet,” Robinson noted.
BREAKING: CISA & FBI issue bulletin that upcoming cyberattacks may "prevent the public from receiving timely information" about the 2024 election.
These same agencies told you: America's voting machines were never connected to the Internet.
— Emerald Robinson ✝️ (@EmeraldRobinson) August 2, 2024
Jeanette Manfra, Acting Under Secretary for Cybersecurity and Communications at the Department of Homeland Security, told Congress in 2017 that America’s voting machines “are not connected to the internet.”
Manfra was responsible for the security of the nation’s voting system. Yet according to a 2020 report by NBC News, a team of 10 cybersecurity experts who specialize in voting systems and elections found nearly three dozen U.S. voting systems connected to the internet.
“We found over 35 (voting systems) had been left online and we’re still continuing to find more,” Kevin Skoglund, a senior technical adviser at the election security advocacy group National Election Defense Coalition, told NBC News at the time.
“We kept hearing from election officials that voting machines were never on the internet,” Skoglund said. “And we knew that wasn’t true. And so we set out to try and find the voting machines to see if we could find them on the internet, and especially the back-end systems that voting machines in the precinct were connecting to report their results.”
Can CISA be trusted?
“CISA has worked with Big Tech corporations to silence Americans since 2020,” noted Logan Washburn, writing at The Federalist last month. “A congressional report from last fall found it had become a “domestic intelligence and speech-police agency” whose behavior was ‘unconstitutional.’”
Last year, the Biden administration blocked the release of documents “revealing the extent to which deep state actors and their third-party allies interfered in the 2020 presidential election by pushing social media censorship,” according to a Breitbart report.
“The government seems particularly eager to stop the release of documents pertaining to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the closely linked Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), both of which are under intense scrutiny for their 2020 interference efforts,” Breitbart’s Allum Bokhari wrote.
Bokhari reported in May 2023 on the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee’s hearing on the government’s “laundering” of censorship through NGOs and private entities:
In the runup to the 2020 election, the consortium created a system whereby state actors including the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department could file “tickets” alongside news stories, flagging them so that Big Tech platforms could subsequently suppress or attach warning labels to them.
Beyond this blatant case of a private-public censorship coalition, the EIP also engaged in partisan politics, allowing the Democratic National Committee to file tickets through the system, as well as the Democrat-aligned groups Common Cause and the NAACP.
News outlets targeted by the EIP included Breitbart News, Fox News, the New York Post, and the Epoch Times, as well as the social media accounts of prominent conservatives Charlie Kirk, Tom Fitton, Jack Posobiec, Mark Levin, James O’Keefe, and Sean Hannity, amongst others.
President Donald Trump was also frequently flagged by the consortium, as well as his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
In April, The Washington Examiner noted the connection of CISA and the suppression of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story just weeks before the election, which no doubt had a big impact on the election’s outcome, in favor of leftist Joe Biden and against incumbent Republican Donald Trump:
On Oct. 14, 2020, hours after the New York Post published a story based on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop that Twitter blocked from being shared online, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center reached out to “misinformation” researchers behind the Election Integrity Partnership, a collaboration between universities, left-wing think tanks, social media companies, and the U.S. government to thwart alleged falsehoods online in the lead-up to the presidential election. That outreach from the GEC, a foreign-focused office Republican lawmakers are investigating for its ties to anti-speech projects in the United States, was apparently thanks to guidance from the DHS and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, according to internal documents.
The newly unearthed coordination underscores the major role that CISA, an agency under scrutiny from the House GOP for allegedly colluding “with Big Tech and ‘disinformation’ partners to censor Americans” in 2020, played in the Election Integrity Partnership, or EIP. Both CISA and Alex Stamos, who directed the Stanford Internet Observatory, a Stanford University office behind the EIP, have appeared to downplay CISA’s role in the partnership despite some since-released records indicating a closer relationship than previously known, the Washington Examiner reported.
CISA and the FBI: paving the way for domestic election interference?
“With Election Day less than 100 days away, it is important to help put into context some of the incidents the American public may see during the election cycle that, while potentially causing some minor disruptions, will not fundamentally impact the security or integrity of the democratic process,” CISA senior advisor Cait Conley said.
“DDoS attacks are one example of a tactic that we have seen used against election infrastructure in the past and will likely see again in the future, but they will NOT affect the security or integrity of the actual election. They may cause some minor disruptions or prevent the public from receiving timely information,” Conley suggested.
“It is important to talk about these potential issues now, because nefarious actors, like our foreign adversaries or cybercriminals, could use DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) incidents to cast doubt on the election systems or processes,” Conley said.
“Congress is still exposing the extent of the detailed coordination platform between Big Tech platforms and the Censorship Industrial Complex,” noted Republican Rep. Darrell Issa of California, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, in April. “Rather than promote free speech and free expression, this partnership was dedicated to denying it to those it did not favor.”
Questions remain: Did government agencies facilitate cheating and lie to the American people in 2020 in order to drag Biden across the finish line? Are they preparing to unconstitutionally install Kamala Harris in 2024?
Quick Hit:
Two firefighters were killed and another wounded Sunday after a gunman opened fire on first responders tackling a blaze near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. The shooter was later found dead, and authorities believe the fire may have been set to lure crews into an ambush.
Key Details:
- The ambush began around 2 p.m. local time as fire crews arrived at a brush fire and were met with sniper-style gunfire from a wooded area.
- SWAT teams located the deceased suspect roughly five hours later, with a weapon nearby. His identity has not yet been released.
- The Kootenai County Sheriff said the ongoing fire could not be addressed during the gunfight, calling the attack a “heinous direct assault” on first responders.
Diving Deeper:
A deadly ambush on Sunday afternoon left two Idaho firefighters dead and a third injured after they were shot while attempting to contain a brush fire on Canfield Mountain. The surprise attack reportedly began around 2 p.m., when bullets suddenly rained down on emergency crews from hidden positions in the wooded terrain near Coeur d’Alene.
Authorities now believe the blaze may have been deliberately set as bait. Kootenai County Sheriff Bob Norris described the situation as “an active sniper attack,” saying the scene quickly escalated into chaos with gunfire coming from multiple directions.
“We don’t know if there’s one, two, three or four [shooters],” Norris said in an early evening press conference. “I’m hoping that someone has a clear shot and is able to neutralize [the suspect], because they’re not showing any signs of surrendering.”
Roughly five hours after the first shots were fired, SWAT officers found a body next to a firearm along the Canfield Mountain Trail. Authorities have not confirmed whether the individual was the sole assailant, nor have they publicly identified the person. The FBI, along with state and local agencies, had been deployed to the scene to assist with the operation.
The two firefighters who died have not yet been named. The third, who sustained a gunshot wound, was transported to Kootenai Health and remains hospitalized. His current condition is unknown.
The firefight effectively halted efforts to contain the brush fire, which remained active late into Sunday. “It’s going to keep burning. We can’t put any resources on it right now,” Norris said during the standoff. Shelter-in-place orders were issued for the surrounding area, including the popular Canfield Mountain Trailhead, but those restrictions were lifted after the suspect was found dead.
Idaho Governor Brad Little reacted to the tragedy on social media, calling the ambush “a heinous direct assault on our brave firefighters.” He added, “Teresa and I are heartbroken. I ask all Idahoans to pray for them and their families as we wait to learn more.”
Federal and local officials are continuing to investigate the incident, including the origins of the fire and whether additional suspects may have been involved.
First-ever BRICS absence deepens questions over internal CCP dissent
Chinese President Xi Jinping will skip the upcoming BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro, the first time he has ever missed the gathering of major emerging powers—a development that will add to speculation that Xi’s power among elite Chinese Communist circles is being challenged by a faction publicly humiliated by Xi in 2022.
Beijing cited a “scheduling conflict,” according to multiple officials involved in summit planning, South China Morning Post has reported. But Xi’s absence—coming amid intensifying economic pressures and purges within the People’s Liberation Army—has triggered speculation that deeper internal political currents may be at play.
China’s delegation to Brazil will instead be led by Premier Li Qiang, marking the second time in under a year that Xi has delegated such a high-level multilateral forum. Observers note that Li also stood in for Xi at the G20 summit in India in 2023.
The BRICS platform is a key pillar of China’s push for a multipolar world, challenging the Western-led order.
The official explanation for Xi’s absence—that he has already met Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva twice in the past year—has done little to quell questions about the Chinese leader’s standing at home. Those concerns are being amplified by mounting signs of internal dissent within the Chinese Communist Party, as China’s economy falters and long-suppressed questions about Xi’s hardline tactics against the West, including mounting threats to invade Taiwan, gain traction with the reemergence of a sidelined political faction.
As detailed in a recent Jamestown Foundation analysis, Xi Jinping may be facing renewed political friction from within the Party’s elite ranks—specifically, the so-called Tuanpai, or Youth League faction, aligned with former president Hu Jintao and premier Wen Jiabao.
The history of the Xi-Hu rift is punctuated by a theatrical public humiliation: in October 2022, Hu Jintao was forcibly escorted from the closing session of the CCP’s 20th Party Congress. The moment was captured on live television and interpreted globally as Xi’s final symbolic purge of Hu’s faction. Hu, seated next to Xi Jinping, appeared to reach for documents on the table. Li Zhanshu, seated to Hu’s left, took the papers and placed them out of reach. Xi signaled, and two security staff approached Hu, gently lifting him from his seat and escorting him out. Hu appeared reluctant, attempting to retrieve the documents and briefly exchanging words with Xi. He also patted Premier Li Keqiang, a key figure in the Youth League faction, on the shoulder before leaving. The stunning incident lasted about 90 seconds.
Li died less than a year later, in October 2023, reportedly from a sudden heart attack while swimming in Shanghai. His unexpected death at age 68—soon after leaving office—was officially described as natural, but has fueled speculation among Chinese observers and dissidents, with some questioning the timing and circumstances.
Evidence of the Hu faction’s comeback emerged from the secretive Party retreat in Beidaihe in August 2023. According to Nikkei Asia, and later corroborated by additional sources, three senior Communist Party elders delivered pointed criticisms of Xi Jinping’s policies behind closed doors. All three had ties to the former Hu-Wen administration. Their intervention reportedly provoked visible frustration from Xi, according to individuals familiar with the meeting.
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In a possible gesture of appeasement—or vulnerability—Xi has more recently echoed terminology traditionally associated with Hu’s tenure. He invoked the phrase “scientific, democratic, and law-based policymaking,” a hallmark of Hu’s governing lexicon, signaling either rhetorical triangulation or a forced concession to resurgent internal pressures.
The most striking signal of renewed factional maneuvering is the quiet reemergence of Hu Chunhua, according to Jamestown’s analysis, the protégé of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao once viewed as a potential future president. Xi sidelined Hu Chunhua in 2022 by excluding him from the Politburo—an unprecedented break from succession norms. But in recent months, Hu has been deployed in high-level diplomatic missions typically reserved for top officials.
In April 2024, Hu led a Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference delegation to West Africa. The next month, he appeared at the Vietnamese Embassy to pay respects following the death of Vietnam’s former president—a role traditionally carried out by a Politburo-level official.
Xi’s sweeping anti-corruption purges in 2023—many of which targeted military figures linked to the Central Military Commission—have depleted some of his institutional backing. The Jamestown Foundation notes that these purges, rather than consolidating Xi’s grip, may have created new political openings for rivals.
Taken together with broader indicators of factional turbulence, Xi’s BRICS no-show feeds a growing intelligence narrative—shared by The Bureau’s expert sources in the United States and Taiwan—that China’s paramount leader, having consolidated power through sweeping purges, is now encountering mounting signs of blowback from within the Party.
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