FBI Director Dan Bongino is vowing to reveal "Truth" in cryptic post put out on X. Bongino saying he's shocked down to his core from what the FBI has uncovered during recent investigations but did not get into specifics. All this coming out amid disputes with AG Pam Bondi over the release of the Epstein files.

The tweet reads in part: "During my tenure here as the Deputy Director of the FBI, I have repeatedly relayed to you that things are happening that might not be immediately visible, but they are happening. The Director and I are committed to stamping out public corruption and the political weaponization of both law enforcement and intelligence operations. It is a priority for us. But what I have learned in the course of our properly predicated and necessary investigations into these aforementioned matters, has shocked me down to my core. We cannot run a Republic like this. I’ll never be the same after learning what I’ve learned. We are going to conduct these righteous and proper investigations by the book and in accordance with the law. We are going to get the answers WE ALL DESERVE."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WZcFlXNs80

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

PLEASE SHOCK US !

27 July 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

The full source for this is the retired CIA analyst, and the best-informed of all reporters on the CIA from the inside (and on U.S. geostrategy), the always truthful and deeply insightful Larry C. Johnson. Afterward, I shall here report key excerpts from an until-now secret U.S. House investigation into Russiagate, which documents what Johnson is saying.

On July 26th, Johnson was interviewed by another of the best reprters on these matters, the retired Lt. Col. Daniel Davis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdaJE5DMkw0

“FAKE INTELLIGENCE: The true story behind the Declassified Documents w/Larry Johnson”   

At 14:21 there, Johnson says “Why the hell wasn’t this stuff released during Donald Trump’s first term?”:

It would have proven what was going on. you know, they didn’t just suddenly find these

14:31

documents, but right. DAVIS: And here’s a question I’ve got, too. Do do you have any idea why that

14:37

wasn’t the case and why, like the Senate, the three-year Senate Intel uh group that that took a look at that,

14:42

etc., the CIA looked at its own stuff. Uh because on July 2nd, they reported the New York Times reported about the

14:49

current CIA director [Ratcliffe] saying that, well, we look back at that stuff and it was largely correct. Uh

14:55

I mean, why would he said that? JOHNSON: That is so much crap. I mean, it really, it’s

15:01

they [he is talking here of the institution, the Deep State, which includes the CIA] they’re covering their own ass. Both the the intelligence community, the

15:07

CIA in particular, Ratcliffe in particular. Ratcliffe when he was director of national intelligence under

15:14

Donald Trump, he had this information.

…

36:45

the documents that Tulsi is releasing now show that there was direct intervention both at at the direction of

36:54

Obama from the White House and then with Clapper and Brennan interfering and

36:59

directly inserting themselves into the clearance process overruling analysts.

37:04

Now, it’s one thing to, when you when you’re uh if you got a factual basis and

37:11

get overruled by a director of CIA, you know, that’s a problem. And that’s

37:16

exactly what Brennan did. It’s another thing that say, well, this is just our opinion. Uh that this wasn’t based on

37:24

opinion. They said, we don’t have any evidence to support that claim.

37:30

…

37:58

DAVIS: I want to show you something from John Kiriakou who’s also a former uh CIA uh

38:02

officer uh who we’ve had on the show in the last month or so, but he was on the PBD broadcast uh and made an interesting

38:10

comment about uh Brennan himself.

38:20

John’s the guy. John says, “I want to be CIA director.” The liberals went crazy.

38:25

They said absolutely not. He was the one of the godfathers of the torture program. Obama says, “Okay, I’m going to

38:31

make him deputy director of the National Security Council, deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism.”

38:37

Then he started doing the kill list. Well, by 2012, the liberals forgot or

38:43

didn’t care or whatever, were distracted. They make him CIA director and then he starts just wreaking

38:49

vengeance on all of his enemies. Wow. This is a bad guy.

38:55

John Brennan is a very bad guy. From day one, he was a bad guy.”

39:00

…

46:55

So they knew they knew Seth Rich was in touch with Julian Assange. They knew how the whole thing had happened. They have

47:02

the intelligence documents. It’s there. Just a simple matter of declassifying them.

47:10

And okay, so now the the whole issue here uh that that uh director Gabbard’s

47:16

raising is that this was a an Obama driven attempt to unseat Trump. DAVIS: So now how do

47:24

you take how do you go from where those things are with the steel dossier, with the DNC stuff, and you know the Russia

47:30

gate etc., to getting him out of power because you mentioned the the impeachments uh that the the first

47:36

impeachment was primarily over whether or not he used uh Ukraine to to try and

47:41

gain uh get a quote quid pro quo etc. How do those things tie together? JOHNSON: Well, the

47:49

the reason I think she’s saying that Obama directed this is because of that

47:54

meeting that took place in early December after um uh Trump won

48:02

that everybody was caught completely unawares that nobody expected Trump to win. Uh it

48:09

was that so when when Obama calls those people into that meeting and basically

48:16

says okay I want, we need to, we need to produce an assessment showing

48:21

that uh Donald Trump that the Russians pulled this off for Donald Trump. It was

48:26

all done for the purpose of discrediting [the next U.S. President, setting him up to be impeached and removed from office]. Look at the subsequent actions that Obama took. They

48:32

started collecting, they were monitoring Mike Flynn’s phone calls. So they took

48:39

the information about what he said to the Russians. They they imposed sanctions immediately

48:46

on Russia, kicked out a bunch of diplomats, seized property.

48:52

All of this was creating this narrative that Russia had interfered when the

48:58

intelligence, actual intelligence showed the exact opposite, that they had not

49:05

interfered. I mean, for God’s sake, when you look at the amount of interference that we do as a country in other

49:11

elections overseas, my god, the Russians would have to go to

49:16

school on us. you know, the the the US method for starting a color revolution.

49:22

——

Among the documents that Gabbard released on 22 July 2025 was the till-now-hidden House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) 18 September 2020 “Oversight Investigation & Referral, The Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA): ‘Russia’s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election’” which found that:

In contrast to the rest of the ICA, the judgment that Putin developed “a clear preference” for candidate Trump and “aspired to help his chances of victory” did not adhere to the tenets of the ICD, Analytic Standards. … The sections addressing Putin’s intentions for influencing the US election did not observe professional criteria set forth in ICD 203, Analytic Standards. …

The ICA ignored or selectively quoted reliable intelligence reports that challenged — and in some cases undermined — judgments that Putin sought to elect Trump. …

DCIA [John Brennan] picked five CIA analysts to write the ICA [Intelligence Community Assessment that was suposed to represent the consensus view of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies], and rushed its production in order to publish two weeks before President-elect Trump was sworn-in. …

Unlike routine IC [Intelligence Community] analysis, the ICA [Intelligence Community Assessment that Obama received and on the basis of which he launched the Russiagate hoax] was a high-profile product ordered by the President, directed by senior IC agency heads, and created by just five CIA analysts, using one principal drafter. Production of the ICA was subject to unusual directives from the President and senior political appointees, and particularly DCIA. The draft was not properly coordinated within CIA or the IC, ensuring it would be published without significant challenges to its conclusions. …

One scant, unclear, and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from a single HUMINT report — published under DCIA Brennan’s December 2016 order — constitutes the only classifled information cited by the ICA for the judgment that Putin “aspired to help Trump’s chances of victory when possible.” …

Despite unknown sourcing, reliable contrary evidence, and implausible claims, the then Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, responding to a request to double check the sourcing behind the judgment, responded in a letter to the Committee that he nonetheless[still] endorsed the ICA judgment. …

The ICA judgment on Putin’s thoughts about helping candidate Trump does not stand if the single interpretation of the [key] fragment is wrong, because there is no other intelligence corroborating it, and in any case, viable — perhaps more likely — alternative interpretations of the fragment exist. …

DCIA overruled CIA professionals to publish and cite the ambiguous fragment. …

DCIA ordered the publication of reports which failed to meet CIA criteria for reliability and clarity, that subsequently became key ICA citations on Putin’s intentions. …

The ICA text failed to acknowledge the ambiguity and uncertain origin of the fragment. …

The ICA mischaracterized the fragment as supporting “high confidence” judgments. …

DCIA ordered the publication of a second substandard report, from an unknown subsource, cited by the ICA to allege that Putin preferred Trump. This information was both unverified and implausible. …

DCIA ordered the publication of a third substandard report — also from an unknown subsource — that was cited to imply Putin’s preference for Trump. … 

The ICA falsely claimed the third substandard report was corroborated  by a body of other reporting .…

The ICA excluded significant intelligence that contradicted its judgments that Putin aspired to help Trump win. …

The ICA selectively excluded information from reliable intelligence sources that senior Russian officials had serious reservation about how a potential Trump administration could be bad for Moscow and complicate repairing relations with Washington. …

Voluminous and likely relevant evidence was excluded from consideration. …

These failures were serious enough to call into question judgments that allege Putin “developed a clear preference for candidate Trump” and “aspired to help his chances of victory” and that “Russian leaders never entirely abandoned hope for a defeat of Secretary Clinton.” …

Documents leaked [regardless by whom] during the election were far less damaging to Secretary Clinton than those Putin chose not to leak. … 

The ICA also misrepresented the unsourced Steele Dossier as intelligence, … that was produced on behalf of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Clinton campaign, … little more than a regurgitation of stories previously published by multiple media outlets. … Even a cursory examination of the dossier documents revealed that the only significant verifiable information had come from media stories. … The dossier was not accidently “acquired” by probing journalists, as the ICA suggests. It is not clear why the ICA covered-up that the dossier was deliberately fed to the media by the FBI former source, Mr. Steele, as political messaging on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC. … 

The ICA claimed that “some” of the source’s information “has been corroborated in the past” but failed to clarify that no significant 2016 information from Mr. Steele on Putin’s covert action operations — the topic of the ICA — had ever been corroborated. …

Mr. Steele refused to be interviewed for this investigation. …

The misrepresentation of the dossier’s credibility extended to White House briefings on the ICA.

Despite the ICA’s significant tradecraft failures, the assessment demonstrated awareness of the ICD standards. [So, they knew what they were doing.]  …

Back on 18 December 2028, Larry Johnson headlined an article, “The Trump Coup Is a Threat to Our Republic”, and, though it was actually a coup by Obama to cripple the Presidency of the incoming President Trump, and so its headline was wrong, it is otherwise as valid and informative an article today as it was then — especially because it received almost no public attention at the time, and is thus news even today.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

https://theduran.com/trumps-cia-director-john-ratcliffe-is-covering-up-for-barack-obama/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

Doug Casey on How the Epstein Scandal Is Shaking the Foundations of Power

International Man: Tucker Carlson recently claimed that it is widely known in Washington that Jeffrey Epstein operated on behalf of Israel’s intelligence service. What are your thoughts?

Doug Casey: Although I lived in DC for almost half my life, since my father’s side of the family has been there since the 1850s, I’m now out of touch with Mordor and its denizens. Therefore, I can’t retail any fresh scuttlebutt to you. The fact is that all any of us really know—or rather think we know—is what we hear, read, or see on the news. And most of that is propaganda, lies, half-truths, conjectures, psy-ops, or just plain stupidity.

That said, I’m inclined to believe the worst because of the type of people who are naturally drawn to Washington, DC. All political centers are similar—DC, Brussels, Tel Aviv, right down to the county seat of Dogpatch. A certain type of person is drawn to Hollywood, and a different type to Las Vegas, a different type to New York. DC attracts busybodies, do-gooders, ideologues, and power junkies, among others. They’re America’s criminal class. Frankly, DC makes my skin crawl. And the place has gotten much worse than it was when I lived there.

In any event, the so-called “intelligence community” is in its own world. I love the way they’re referred to as a “community,” as if it were a beneficial social group. The CIA and other praetorian agencies each have their own “campus” in and around DC, their denizens sequestered in their siloes, associating mainly with each other.

The world of Intel is necessarily one of secrecy, blackmail, bribery, honey traps, murder, and lies. It’s only logical to believe the very worst because of the kind of people that we’re dealing with.

I suspect the CIA has closer ties with Israel’s Mossad than most parts of America. They’re in the same business, they’re colleagues. They see the general public as the unwashed little people, pawns.

International Man: President Trump appears to be damaging his reputation and approval ratings due to the Epstein scandal, even resorting to insults directed at his own supporters. What do you make of this situation?

Doug Casey: It’s stupid to accuse your supporters of being stupid, as Trump has done. Americans, Trump lovers and haters alike, just want to know how “their” government and its employees are involved regarding the allegations against Epstein. Why were only Epstein and Ghislaine indicted? Who were the rich and famous men they were pimping for? Will the victims ever get justice? Did Epstein become a billionaire by shaking down his clients? Why is Ghislaine, who knows all, not being asked to testify?

And, of course: Who killed Epstein? Since they say it was a suicide, I’m tempted to accuse Hillary. Just kidding…

Trump promised his would be an open administration numerous times during his campaign. As did his minions—like Bongino, Patel, and Bondi. Now they’re all backtracking.

Perhaps enough Trump associates are involved that he’s afraid to have them exposed. Or perhaps he’s being intimidated or blackmailed: “If you allow me to be exposed, I’ll expose you for what I know.”

This isn’t just another sleazy sex scandal. Americans have accepted their presidents as horny hound dogs since the days of JFK. Even the credible rumors about Obama frequenting sauna clubs and acting as a rent-a-boy were disregarded. But maybe this is a thread that pulls apart the whole corrupt fabric.

International Man: Epstein was known for owning unusual works of art, reportedly including a painting of Bill Clinton in Monica Lewinsky’s purple dress (link). What’s your take?

Doug Casey: I’d like to know the circumstances under which that painting was put together, why it was hung in Epstein’s NY house, and why Clinton didn’t kibosh it all.

It’s further evidence that the people who run in these circles are degraded and perverted. It’s as if they’re reenacting the world of the Roman Empire, where anything went among the so-called elite as it gradually disintegrated. Or perhaps the world of Louis XVI, bankrupted by wars, taxes, inflation, and corruption. It was so dissipated that the French Revolution was inevitable. Fortunately, for today’s elite, the American peasants are zonked by Prozac, fentanyl, and cannabis. They’re gutless. And don’t have pitchforks and torches.

So maybe we won’t have a revolution as the Epstein Affair unfolds. After all, even Mao Zedong, possibly the greatest criminal in world history in terms of death and suffering, wasn’t overthrown. In fact, the Chinese seem to love him. Even Pol Pot skated, even though he killed perhaps a quarter of his countrymen.

It’s hard to predict what might happen if the Epstein Affair boils over. Maybe nothing, as supine as Americans are. As for myself, I’m ambivalent. On the one hand, a revolution would be so unpleasant and inconvenient that I’d like to see it all swept under the rug.

On the other hand, my righteous streak says fiat justitia ruat caelum—let justice be done though the heavens fall. On the third paw, as my friend Lobo Tigre would say, it doesn’t matter what we want. We’re just little people.

The point I’m trying to make is that only the worst people are in politics. With very few exceptions, like Ron Paul, even if they have good intentions going in, if they stay in, they’ll be co-opted and corrupted. Widespread bribery, blackmail, and worse among the elite is the real meaning of the Epstein Affair.

International Man: What do you think will happen next in the Epstein scandal? Do you believe Trump will be able to make it go away?

Doug Casey: Top people are unquestionably involved in this scandal. They’re so arrogant and entitled that they weren’t worried. My bet is that when he was campaigning and saying that all would be revealed, bullshitting as usual, Trump didn’t realize how deep it went. This is not 5D chess. This is what happens when you hang out with slimy people, and the truth is revealed. Let’s hope the revelations Tulsi Gabbard made a few days ago get traction. Trump is about to discover that the coverup is worse than the crime.

International Man: Do you believe the Epstein scandal is delegitimizing the US government? If so, where do you see this trend heading?

Doug Casey: I certainly hope it winds up delegitimizing the US government, which has become a predator on America. Unfortunately, however, the average American conflates the government with America itself. As an anarchocapitalist, I’d like to see Epsteingate delegitimize the idea of the State itself.

But that’s a ridiculous and idle dream. It’s not going to happen, because the nature of government, for all of recorded history, has been all about scandals.

And worse: pogroms, wars, persecutions, and every type of horrendous criminality.

I think Trump is running a risk of being impeached. And it may work this time, because the Republicans—depending on a number of factors—may lose bigly in the elections late next year.

I’ve asked myself why all the horrible things that governments have done throughout history haven’t discredited the institution. Could the fact that we now have an interconnected electronic world make a difference?

I think the answer is no. Humans are pack animals, and we live in a hierarchy. The hoi polloi love to chatter about their betters, the so-called elite. And the elite, within the security of their inner circles, love to decry how stupid and naïve the little people are.

I don’t know what the upshot of the scandal will be, but it has the potential to be big, especially in combination with the numerous other landmines that Trump may stumble on, and time bombs that are waiting to go off.

It seems to me that now’s a good time for a Plan B. And not a particularly good time to be long government bonds, or even the stock market.

Editor’s Note: When scandals like this surface, they’re often a symptom of something much deeper—systemic rot that extends into the economy itself. As confidence in leadership, institutions, and stability erodes, the risk of a full-blown economic unraveling grows. Most will be blindsided. But you don’t have to be.

https://www.activistpost.com/doug-casey-on-how-the-epstein-scandal-is-shaking-the-foundations-of-power/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.