espionage
Tulsi Gabbard confirmed as Trump’s Director of National Intelligence

Quick Hit:
The Senate on Wednesday confirmed former Democrat congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence. The vote, which passed mostly along party lines at 52-48, followed weeks of intense debate over Gabbard’s past views on intelligence operations and foreign policy.

Key Details:
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Gabbard, who represented Hawaii in Congress for eight years, faced sharp scrutiny from both parties over her past comments on U.S. adversaries, surveillance programs, and her stance on Edward Snowden.
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Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans approved her nomination last week after she provided follow-up answers addressing their concerns. Some GOP lawmakers had initially resisted, citing worries over her foreign policy positions.
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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer opposed the confirmation, claiming that Gabbard “wouldn’t receive more than ten votes” if Republicans were allowed to vote in secret.
Diving Deeper:
Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democrat congresswoman from Hawaii turned Trump ally, was confirmed Wednesday as the director of national intelligence following a 52-48 Senate vote that split mostly along party lines. Former GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell was the only Republican to join all Democrats in voting against Gabbard, and the confirmation marks one of President Trump’s most controversial intelligence appointments, with Gabbard facing intense questioning over her positions on classified intelligence and foreign adversaries.
Gabbard’s past remarks and actions drew bipartisan concern, particularly her defense of Edward Snowden, her prior skepticism of U.S. intelligence assessments on Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, and her opposition to surveillance authorities like Section 702. Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans had initially hesitated on her nomination, but they ultimately backed her after she responded to follow-up inquiries about her positions on national security.
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, claimed that Gabbard was unfit for the role, accusing her of “publicly defending Snowden after he compromised our nation’s most sensitive collection sources and methods.” Warner also criticized her past statements blaming the U.S. and NATO for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and her meeting with a controversial Syrian cleric.
During confirmation hearings, Gabbard refuted accusations that she harbored sympathies for foreign adversaries, calling the allegations “offensive.” She defended her record on national security and insisted that while she disagreed with Snowden’s actions, her proposed intelligence reforms would prevent similar leaks in the future.
Senate Republicans ultimately rallied behind Gabbard, with Senate Republican Whip John Barrasso pushing back on accusations that she had echoed Kremlin propaganda. He pointed to her past support for sanctions against Russia and Iran, as well as her backing of military aid to Ukraine after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.
Schumer and other Senate Democrats urged Republicans to resist pressure from the Trump administration, claiming that GOP lawmakers were putting politics ahead of national security. Despite these objections, the confirmation moved forward, concluding a bitterly divided debate over Gabbard’s appointment to lead the nation’s intelligence operations.
espionage
Bill introduced to ban student visas to Chinese nationals

From The Center Square
By
U.S. Rep. Riley Moore, R-WV, filed a bill on Friday to ban Chinese nationals from receiving student visas.
“Every year we allow nearly 300,000 Chinese nationals to come to the U.S. on student visas. We’ve literally invited the CCP to spy on our military, steal our intellectual property, and threaten national security. Just last year, the FBI charged five Chinese nationals here on student visas after they were caught photographing joint US-Taiwan live fire military exercises. This cannot continue,” he said.
Moore’s Stop Chinese Communist Prying by Vindicating Intellectual Safeguards in Academia Act (Stop CCP VISAs Act) has several cosponsors. The bill would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to prohibit the admission of Chinese nationals as nonimmigrant students, according to the bill language.
He points to the FBI last year charging five Chinese nationals who were in the U.S. on student visas at the University of Michigan after they were caught photographing joint US-Taiwan live fire military exercises at Camp Grayling in August 2023 claiming they were members of the media.
He also points to a Chinese student attending the University of Minnesota who was sentenced to six months in prison last October for taking drone photographs of naval shipbuilding operations at Newport News Shipbuilding in Norfolk, Virginia. Moore also points to a former Illinois Institute of Technology graduate who was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2023 for spying for the Chinese government, acting as an agent of China’s Ministry of State Security and making a material false statement to the U.S. Army when he enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve.
“Congress needs to end China’s exploitation of our student visa program. It’s time we turn off the spigot and immediately ban all student visas going to Chinese nationals,” he said.
These are but a handful of examples. More than 60 Chinese Communist Party-related cases of espionage and acts of transnational repression were reported in 20 states under the Biden administration, according to a U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security report, The Center Square reported. That’s in addition to 224 reported incidents of Chinese espionage directed at the U.S. between 2000 and 2023, according to the report. Examples include transmission of sensitive military information to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), theft of U.S. trade secrets to benefit the PRC, transnational repression schemes to target PRC dissidents and obstruction of justice.
Other examples include a Department of Justice case from last December involving a Chinese national and lawful permanent resident of California who was arrested for flying a drone over Vandenberg Space Force Base and taking photographs. He was arrested for violating national defense airspace prior to boarding a flight to China.
Another DOJ case related to a Chinese national illegally living in the U.S. who was arrested for allegedly shipping weapons and ammunition to North Korea, The Center Square reported.
Another involved a PRC spy arrested in California who worked for a state lawmaker and Chinese operatives arrested in Guam near a U.S. military installation on the same day as a live ballistic missile interception test, The Center Square reported.
Outgoing FBI Director Christopher Wray’s parting warning to Americans was that China remains one of the greatest threats to U.S. national security, a warning he consistently issued.
“The greatest long-term threat facing our country, in my view, is represented by the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese government, which I consider to be the defining threat of our generation,” he said, The Center Square reported.
The DOJ says it opens new cases to counter PRC intelligence operations roughly every 12 hours. Of the espionage cases it’s prosecuted since 2018, it says 80% allege the PRC would benefit; 60% of trade secret theft cases are linked to China.
It also lists examples of indictments of Chinese nationals conspiring to and committing economic espionage and theft of trade secrets going back to 2018 under the Trump administration.
PRC threats increased as the greatest number of Chinese nationals illegally entered the U.S. in recorded history under the Biden administration – more than 176,000 nationwide, The Center Square first reported.
espionage
Why has President Trump not released the JFK, Jeffrey Epstein files?

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.”
Presumably, Carlson is speaking about Trump’s first choice for attorney general: Matt Gaetz.
After prodding from Cuomo, Carlson admitted that the Senate intelligence committee member was neocon GOP Senator Tom Cotton.
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.
For what it’s worth, Cotton has reportedly received over $1 million in campaign funds from AIPAC.
Morley told Carlson that there were “profound conflicts between Israel and the Kennedy White House.”
To which Carlson replied, “One of the only major policy changes” that Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy’s successor, made after Kennedy’s death was lifting all inspections of the Dimona plant.
Carlson also recalled that Johnson did not seek to have the American Zionist Council register as a foreign entity, a comment clearly intended to suggest Israel benefited massively from Kennedy’s death.
Morley closed the podcast by predicting that Trump will likely get “very strong pushback” from his “national security apparatus” due to the influence of “Israeli interests” who do not want those sorts of facts to be widely known.
Morley is right. By all indications, that is precisely what has happened these past two months. Sadly, Americans may never ever get the truth.
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