TBR News November 1, 2019

The Voice of the White House Washington, D.C. November 1, 2019:
“Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.
When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.
I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.
He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.
He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.
It is becoming more and more evident to even the least intelligent American voter that Trump is vicious, corrupt and amoral. He has stated often that even if he loses the election in 2020, he will not leave the White House. I have news for Donald but this is not the place to discuss it.
Commentary for November 1:” Everywhere you look in Washington today, all you can see is rampant corruption and the worst of the lot if the President himself, followed by many of his loyal Republicn Senators. And now we are beginning to see a large number of child pornography sites being exposed to public view by a courageous Arizona-based website. It is interesting to note that Evangelical Christians are strong supporters of Trump and continue to be so despite a constant drumfire of new information erupting daily about his corrupt and vicious habits. Like always cleames unto like, after all, and perhaps the Jesus Freaks feel more at home with Donald that they would with someone more respectable!”

The Table of Contents
• Warning!
• FBI battling child pornographers with darknet honeypots and Tor malware
• Pelosi bangs the gavel: House votes to endorse Trump impeachment inquiry
• Trump lures GOP senators on impeachment with cold cash
• Trump’s Looking for Corruption: Start Here
• After Taking Presidential Corruption To New Heights, Trump Calls Everyone Else Corrupt
• The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
• Encyclopedia of American Loons

Warning!

A site identified as a ‘honeypot’ on undelivered and returned e-mail sendings has been reported to be a child pornographic site, generally stated to be S/M in nature, and such child porn sites are highly illegal and subject to government surveillance and prosecution.
Computer Evidence
Many child pornography investigations begin from police sting operations on file sharing networks. Websites that advertise child pornography are called honeypots
If you encounter such a site during the course of a send-out, it would be wise to abandon it at once and remove the address from your files.
You might also want to notify the FBI in your area.
Also, be sure to round-robin this information to all your legitimate contacts so as to prevent them having serious problems.
We have long listings of ‘honeypot’ addresses involved in this unpleasant, and illegal, business and are publishing the first group here.
It is amazing how innocent these addresses appear! See the following exposure. ed

FBI battling child pornographers with darknet honeypots and Tor malware
by Mark Coppock
Digital Trends

The following honeypot identifications directly from: smtp.servconfig.com *

• lignemaginot@yahoo.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• lightning@goeaston.net Destination is to a known honeypot.
• li@newsday.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• lexusjohn@earthlink.net Destination is to a known honeypot.
• ewandos@yandex.ru Destination is to a known honeypot.
• leustace70@hotmail.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• leusss@gmail.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@wrmea.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@washpost.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@time.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@thetimes.co.uk Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@the-times.co.uk Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@theherald.co.uk Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@sunday-times.co.uk Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@standard.co.uk Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@observer.co.uk Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@nytimes.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@newsweek.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@newscientist.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@MSNBC.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@latimes.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@independent.co.uk Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@examiner.ie Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@economist.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@dailymail.co.uk Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters@csindy.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letters.editor@ft.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• letter@twtmail.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• lesliejgreen@hotmail.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• lesbertossi@hotmail.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• lerom74.lr@gmail.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• leopolis13@gmail.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• leo_carey@newyorker.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• leo_b@web.de Destination is to a known honeypot.
• lenum@youmail.dk Destination is to a known honeypot.
• lensoccolich@mac.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• lekoliver@aol.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• lekenny@gmx.de Destination is to a known honeypot.
• lehrman@telia.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• leeww@chronograph.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• leesjokers@yahoo.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• leeserachel@hotmail.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• lee.richards@psywar.org Destination is to a known honeypot.
• leda56@live.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• le-corbusier@hotmail.com Destination is to a known honeypot.
• leck11@hotmail.com,Destination is to a known honeypot.
• lebensschule-schuler@t-online.de Destination is to a known honeypot.
• lduggan@clarechampion.ie Destination is to a known honeypot.

Many more to come!
*Domain Name: SERVCONFIG.COM
Registry Domain ID: 1814508605_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com
Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com

Pelosi bangs the gavel: House votes to endorse Trump impeachment inquiry
Vote set rules for public phase of impeachment inquiry, laying out plan that could produce televised hearings within two weeks
November 1, 2019
by Tom McCarthy in New York and Lauren Gambino in Washington
The Guardian
For only the third time in the history of the modern presidency, the US House of Representatives voted on Thursday to formalize impeachment proceedings against the president of the United States.
In a largely party-line vote of 232-196, the House embarked on a path that seemed likely to lead to Donald Trump’s impeachment – if not necessarily his removal from office. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, presided over the vote and marked it with a bang of her gavel.
Republicans held ranks to vote uniformly against the process, while two Democrats crossed party lines to join them. The House’s sole independent, former Republican Justin Amash of Michigan, voted to advance the resolution.
The vote set rules for the public phase of the inquiry, laying out a road map for impeachment that could produce dramatic televised public hearings within two weeks and a vote on impeachment itself by the end of the year.
“This resolution sets the stage for the next phase of our investigation, one in which the American people have the opportunity to hear from the witnesses firsthand,” the House intelligence chairman, Adam Schiff, said in a floor speech ahead of the vote.
“We will continue to conduct this inquiry with the seriousness of purpose that our task deserves because it is our duty and because no one is above the law.”
Pelosi called the vote a “solemn occasion” but said it was a necessary “step forward” to establish the framework for the open hearings.
House minority leader Kevin McCarthy said Democrats were “trying to impeach the president because they are scared that they cannot defeat him” in the 2020 election.
As the vote was announced, Trump tweeted: “The Greatest Witch Hunt In American History!” The White House issued a statement saying “the president has done nothing wrong” and calling the process “a blatantly partisan attempt to destroy the president”.
For weeks, congressional investigators have been interviewing witnesses – 15 and counting – behind closed doors about alleged misconduct by Trump, who stands accused of using the power of his office to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 US election.
Trump has denied wrongdoing, claiming that a July phone call in which he asked the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, for a political “favor”, as captured in a partial transcript released by the White House and backed up by witness testimony, was “perfect”.
The desired favor, as Trump himself explained in the call, was for Ukraine to investigate a company that had employed a son of Joe Biden, whom Trump saw as a top political threat. Trump also wanted an investigation that would cast doubt on Russian tampering in the 2016 election.
At the time, the White House had suspended almost $400m in military aid for Ukraine appropriated by Congress, and US diplomats had advised Ukrainian officials that a White House visit for Zelenskiy was contingent on the announcement of investigations.
The parade of witnesses appearing before congressional investigators continued on Thursday with the testimony of Tim Morrison, a senior national security council official. He corroborated prior testimony describing efforts by the Trump administration to strike a suspicious deal with Ukrainians.
If Trump is impeached, a Senate trial would follow, possibly early next year, with a two-thirds majority vote required to remove Trump from office.
Still in question was whether Morrison’s former boss, the then national security adviser John Bolton, who reportedly described the back-room Trump-Ukraine haggling as a “drug deal” that he wanted no part of, would testify before Congress.
A lawyer for Bolton told Congress on Wednesday that while Bolton would not testify without a subpoena, the lawyer stood ready to receive a subpoena.
Testimony by Bolton, a Yale-educated lawyer, blistering conservative hawk and expert bureaucratic infighter, could be as damaging for Trump as any so far. Bolton reportedly told aides that Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal emissary in the Ukraine saga, was a “hand grenade” that could blow everyone up, and he encouraged multiple aides to take their concerns about Trump’s Ukraine dealings to the top lawyer on the national security council.
That lawyer, John Eisenberg, has also been invited to testify next week before congressional investigators.
The House vote on Thursday implemented a procedure likely to lead to the drafting of articles of impeachment against Trump in the judiciary committee.
When Pelosi banged the gavel, Republicans shouted “objection”, briefly sowing confusion as the clerk strained to be heard and Democrats countered with calls for order. The room eventually settled and the House returned to the rest of its agenda before leaving Washington for a week-long recess.
Moments after the vote, Republicans began their assault on Democrats in “swing” districts who supported the resolution, sending emails to supporters that accused the Democrats by name of participating in a “fraud”. With only two Democratic defections, that list includes members critical to the party’s majority.
Analysts have said that Trump is vulnerable to impeachment for abuse of power, obstruction of justice and contempt of Congress, charges familiar from previous impeachment proceedings against presidents Richard Nixon, who resigned, and Bill Clinton, who was impeached but not removed from office.
The procedure allows for Republicans to request witnesses and documents and provides for the presence of lawyers representing Trump at judiciary committee proceedings.
Before that stage, however, public hearings would play out before the intelligence committee, chaired by Schiff of California, who has been spearheading the impeachment inquiry.
Schiff would call witnesses who previously testified in closed-door depositions before investigators, with an eye on presenting to the public the strongest case against Trump. Many Americans who have not been following the twists and turns of the closed-door testimony would be hearing the allegations against Trump – and meeting the witnesses, who include senior officials in the White House, state department and Pentagon – for the first time.

Trump lures GOP senators on impeachment with cold cash
The president is tapping his vast donor network to buck up lawmakers whose support he badly needs — but who also need him.
October 31, 2019
by Alex Isenstadt
Politico
President Donald Trump is rewarding senators who have his back on impeachment — and sending a message to those who don’t to get on board.
Trump is tapping his vast fundraising network for a handful of loyal senators facing tough reelection bids in 2020. Each of them has signed onto a Republican-backed resolution condemning the inquiry as “unprecedented and undemocratic.”
Conspicuously absent from the group is Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a politically vulnerable Republican who’s refused to support the resolution and avoided taking a stance on impeachment. With his new push, Trump is exerting leverage over a group he badly needs in his corner with an impeachment trial likely coming soon to the Senate — but that also needs him.
Republican senators on the ballot next year are lagging in fundraising, stoking uncertainty about the GOP’s hold on the chamber, and could use the fundraising might of the president. Trump’s political operation has raked in over $300 million this year.
On Wednesday, the Trump reelection campaign sent a fundraising appeal to its massive email list urging donors to provide a contribution that would be divided between the president and Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, and North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis. Each of the senators are supporting the anti-impeachment resolution despite being endangered in 2020.
“If we don’t post strong fundraising numbers,” the message warned, “we won’t be able to defend the President from this baseless Impeachment WITCH HUNT.”
Next week, Trump will lend a hand to Georgia Sen. David Perdue, a staunch ally who has also spoken out against impeachment. On Nov. 8, the president will host an Atlanta fundraising lunch that will jointly benefit his campaign, the Republican National Committee, and Perdue’s reelection effort. Attendees are being asked to give up to $100,000, according to an invitation obtained by POLITICO.
Conspicuously absent from the group is Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a politically vulnerable Republican who’s refused to support the resolution and avoided taking a stance on impeachment. With his new push, Trump is exerting leverage over a group he badly needs in his corner with an impeachment trial likely coming soon to the Senate — but that also needs him.
Republican senators on the ballot next year are lagging in fundraising, stoking uncertainty about the GOP’s hold on the chamber, and could use the fundraising might of the president. Trump’s political operation has raked in over $300 million this year.
On Wednesday, the Trump reelection campaign sent a fundraising appeal to its massive email list urging donors to provide a contribution that would be divided between the president and Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, and North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis. Each of the senators are supporting the anti-impeachment resolution despite being endangered in 2020.
“If we don’t post strong fundraising numbers,” the message warned, “we won’t be able to defend the President from this baseless Impeachment WITCH HUNT.”
Next week, Trump will lend a hand to Georgia Sen. David Perdue, a staunch ally who has also spoken out against impeachment. On Nov. 8, the president will host an Atlanta fundraising lunch that will jointly benefit his campaign, the Republican National Committee, and Perdue’s reelection effort. Attendees are being asked to give up to $100,000, according to an invitation obtained by POLITICO.
The president is looking to buck up senators coming under mounting pressure on impeachment. Gardner, who is widely seen as the most jeopardized Republican incumbent up for reelection, faced criticism earlier this month after he dodged questions about Trump’s conduct. Ernst was confronted at a town hall over her support for the president. This week, a liberal group began a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign pushing both Republican senators to support impeachment.
The new online fundraising drive bypassed Collins, an occasional Trump critic who called on the president to retract his tweet comparing the impeachment investigation to a “lynching.” Collins also said Trump made a “ big mistake” in asking China to investigate the Biden family.
The Maine senator has avoided taking a position on impeachment because, she says, as a juror in a prospective Senate trial she doesn’t want to “prejudge” the proceedings.
Arizona Sen. Martha McSally, another vulnerable Republican facing reelection, was also omitted, though apparently for a different reason. While McSally signed onto the anti-impeachment resolution, she has frustrated Republican officials over her reluctance to exclusively use WinRed, a Trump-endorsed online fundraising tool. Party officials are trying to turn WinRed into a centralized hub of small-donor giving ahead of the 2020 election and used the platform to send out Trump’s appeal for the three senators.
Collins and McSally are missing out on a potential windfall after they were both outraised by their Democratic rivals during the third quarter of the year. McSally’s Democratic opponent, former astronaut Mark Kelly, has raked in $5 million more than her over the course of the year.
McSally’s campaign declined to comment, and a spokesperson for Collins did not respond.
Mike Reed, a Republican National Committee spokesman, said Wednesday’s appeal from the Trump campaign brought in “six figures” over the course of the day. “Our supporters stand totally behind President Trump and are eager to support down-ballot candidates who do the same,” he said.
Party officials said there are likely to be additional Trump-led digital fundraising efforts for senators and that those who weren’t included in this wave could be in a later one.
The president has been a fundraising boon for Republican senators. Earlier this month, Texas Sen. John Cornyn sent out an appeal to donors that prominently featured an image of Trump flashing a thumbs-up. The plea asked givers to “Show President Trump you have his back!” and invited them to split their donations between the president and Cornyn’s reelection campaigns.
The Texas senator tweeted afterward that his campaign “had its biggest online fundraising day ever.”
“The donors listen to the president, and he has the most capacity to energize small-dollar contributions by making the case that he needs a Senate majority to be successful,” said Scott Jennings, a former political aide in the George W. Bush White House.
Trump’s interest in assisting down-ballot candidates has heartened Republican strategists who worry that the 2020 election is turning out to be a re-run of the disastrous 2018 midterms, when GOP candidates were vastly out-raised. The hope is that Trump can harness his massive small-donor network to help Republican senators, who are trying to protect a narrow majority.
“The hard lessons from 2018 were that elections have consequences and it is the president’s party now,” said Scott Reed, the senior political strategist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Trump, Reed added, “has the ability to turn on the money spigot like no one else.”

Trump’s Looking for Corruption: Start Here
His Rogues Gallery of a Cabinet Is as Corrupt as It Gets
October 9, 2019
by Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport Opinion Editor
I’m more than amused by Donald Trump’s newfound insistence that he is in search of Corruption to unearth.
Indeed, in pursuit of Corruption, he is willing to walk all over the U.S. Constitution in order to tag political foe Joe Biden and his son as the source of a Shady Deal, with him risking impeachment by Congress in order to do so.
This comes as repeated new investigative efforts find no evidence of specific corruption in Biden joining calls across Western Europe for the removal of a Ukrainian top prosecutor who was seen as bending all decisions in favor of Russian oligarchs doing business in Ukraine – at the same time that his son had joined the board of a Ukrainian energy company.
But let’s take the president at his, um, ever-changing word. Maybe he is interested in unearthing Corruption. I certainly am. After all who wouldn’t want to rein in “dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery” or other financial shenanigans.
Maybe he should look closer to home.
How many of his own Cabinet members used to represent the very companies they now are supposed to oversee?
Andrew Wheeler
Andrew Wheeler, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, used to represent gas and oil interests, and, surprise, has ruled several times already in favor of gas and oil interests in deciding on which EPA regulations should be tossed out. So too had been his predecessor, Scott Pruitt, the former Oklahoma attorney general, who actually had sued the EPA repeatedly for, well, enforcing environmental rules. Think any of this sounds like the makings of Corruption?
How about Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary who lied to Congress and was censured by Congress about the reasons for trying to add a question about citizenship to the Census forms? In August 2018, Forbes reported that Ross’s business partners and workers accused Ross of illicitly siphoning or stealing a total of $120 million. In February 2019, Ross’ financial disclosure was rejected by the United States Office of Government Ethics after he reported that he sold bank stock in conflict with other disclosures he made.
Wilbur Ross
In June 2018, an investigation by Forbes found that Ross, while United States Secretary of Commerce, owned “stakes in companies co-owned by the Chinese government, a shipping firm tied to Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, a Cypriot bank reportedly caught up in the Russia investigation and a huge player in an industry Ross is now investigating and that Ross had failed to divest his financial holdings, instead putting them in a trust for his family members, contradicting Ross’s written statement in November 2017 that he had divested all his financial holdings. Ross may have broken the law in doing so. These holdings posed a conflict of interest for Ross, as the Trump administration was in a position to affect the value of the holdings. Sound like Corruption concern to you?
Betsy DeVos
Betsy DeVos, the Education Secretary, has won her Trump administration spurs by fostering parochial and private schools at the cost of taking money from public schools and trying to make rules easier for campus rapists and sexual assaulters. DeVos and her family have seen their investments skyrocket since Trump started enacting business policies that have helped corporate leaders.
Steve Mnuchin, who has lied and twisted regularly in public to protect Trump’s flank, himself has acknowledged that he had failed to disclose to the Senate Finance Committee nearly $100 million in assets, as well as his role as a director of an investment fund incorporated in the Cayman Islands, a notorious tax shelter, during his confirmation. He also denied that OneWest Bank—an institution that specialized in foreclosures in the aftermath of the financial crisis—had participated in the practice of “robo-signing” foreclosure documents without doing the necessary diligence.
Steven Mnuchin
Elaine Chao, the transportation secretary and wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has come under scrutiny for family ties to Chinese business dealings in the shipping industry. Just this week, Chao was the subject of news articles noting that she appears to favor businesses from Kentucky, where McConnell is seeking reelection.
This call against Corruption is coming from Team Trump, where working for the president while also working for foreign governments is seen as okay (Michael Flynn), outright bribery in buying off sex partners is allowed (Michael Cohen), and hiding payments made in violation of campaign finance is within bounds (National Enquirer publisher).
Elaine Chao
Then there is the Trump family itself, with all the ethical concerns raised about continuing to route international figures to his own hotels and resorts, renting his properties to the Air Force, and generally allowing his family members to do business with China and other countries in just the manner that he finds objectionable in Biden. Jared Kushner’s family alone has been embroiled directly in money-making schemes in China and the Middle East of the exact variety that Trump sees in the Bidens.
The list goes on, depending on how widely you want to define the exact Corruption.
For sure, such a broadside against Corruption might start with a look at Trump’s tax returns, which he has fought mightily in court and now has won a temporary reprieve from a New York judge’s order to release them.
By all means, please go after Corruption, Mr. President

After Taking Presidential Corruption To New Heights, Trump Calls Everyone Else Corrupt
Trump has called Democratic leaders, the news media, former President Barack Obama and the entire 2016 election “corrupt.”
October 31, 2019
by S.V. Date.
Huffington Post
WASHINGTON — Look up “corrupt” in the dictionary and you could expect to find an illustration of Donald Trump looking right back ― yet that has not kept the president from repeatedly calling others corrupt in recent weeks.
Trump has given his daughter and son-in-law prominent White House jobs, steers lobbyists and political groups seeking his favor toward using his Pennsylvania Avenue hotel, and even successfully pushed the U.S. government to host the next G-7 meeting at his own golf resort, which will put tens of millions of American tax dollars into his own cash registers next June.
“He has no shame,” said Joe Walsh, a former Illinois congressman who is running against Trump for the 2020 Republican nomination. “He’s incapable of shame. That’s not normal.
Indeed, such actions, had they been taken by a mayor, a county executive or a governor, would in all likelihood result in state or federal public corruption charges. While laws and rules vary by state and locality, ethics laws generally prohibit public officials from profiting from their offices.
Giving oneself a large government contract ― as Trump’s White House announced Thursday with the selection of his troubled Doral, Florida, golf course as the site of the next summit of the world’s largest democratic economies ― would almost certainly result in a criminal prosecution, ethics experts said.
“This is a president who believes the powers of the presidency are bestowed on him to advance his own personal interests, political and profit-seeking, rather than those of the American people,” said Robert Weissman, president of the liberal watchdog group Public Citizen.
But as the sitting president, Trump is immune from both ethics laws and criminal prosecution, and not only has he openly engaged in nepotism and self-dealing, he has, in recent weeks, started accusing political opponents and the news media of “corruption.”
At an Oct. 2 news conference, for example, he called former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter “stone, cold corrupt.” At an Oct. 11 rally in Lake Charles, Louisiana, he broadened that to all Democrats: “The radical Democrats’ policies are crazy. Their politicians are corrupt.” In an Oct. 14 statement he posted on Twitter, Trump called The New York Times corrupt. Just two days later, during a photo opportunity with the visiting president of Italy, he called his predecessor Barack Obama corrupt, as well as the entire 2016 election.
Others Trump has labeled “corrupt” in recent weeks: former FBI director James Comey, former FBI agent Peter Strzok, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, the entire Mueller investigation into the help Russia gave Trump in winning the 2016 election, all of the news media, California Democratic congressman Adam Schiff and CNN.
He is the most corrupt president in modern times. He has to convince his followers that everyone is corrupt so they will ignore his corruption.
Jennifer Horn, former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party
To Trump critics, the president’s attacks are part of a predictable pattern: Accuse others of the inappropriate behavior that he himself engages in.
Bandy Lee, among a group of mental health professionals who have been warning of Trump’s state of mind for years, said Trump is exhibiting typical behavior for a “paranoid, delusional” leader. “He accuses others exactly of what he is responsible for,” said Lee, a Yale Medical School professor of psychiatry. “It is a psychological defense called ‘projection.’”
Josh Schwerin, a former spokesman for 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, recalled Trump’s response when Clinton accused Trump of behaving like Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s puppet. “No puppet. No puppet. You’re the puppet,” Trump replied at the third and final presidential debate.
“He accuses other people of doing the bad things he’s doing,” Schwerin said.
“He is the most corrupt president in modern times,” said Jennifer Horn, a former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party. “He has to convince his followers that everyone is corrupt so they will ignore his corruption.”
The White House did not respond to HuffPost queries regarding Trump’s self-dealing and nepotism.
One top Republican National Committee member, though, said he is not bothered by any of Trump’s behavior, and instead attacked the news media for not reporting sufficiently on the Clinton Foundation, Hunter Biden or the money former Obama has made since leaving office.
“A few dollars on his hotels, which are actually a legitimate business, I’m not going to lose much sleep over,” said Shawn Steel, a longtime RNC member from California, urging more scrutiny of Hunter Biden, who served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
Damaging Joe Biden’s 2020 candidacy was a key objective of Trump’s newfound interest in rooting out “corruption” in Ukraine, according to a top Trump adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity. Trump believes Biden would be his strongest opponent and has sought to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate a conspiracy theory that Ukrainian officials seeking to help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 election planted false evidence to make it appear that Russia had helped Trump.
According to that conspiracy theory, which also manages to tie in the Bidens and Hungarian billionaire George Soros and the framing of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, the hacked Democratic National Committee server and Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails have been hidden away somewhere in Ukraine.
Trump’s former homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, has called the claim “completely debunked” and warned that Trump’s obsession with it would be the “white whale” that could bring him down.
Indeed, it was Trump’s request of Ukraine’s president in a July 25 phone call to investigate both the Bidens and the 2016 election conspiracy that sparked a whistleblower complaint against Trump, which in turn led to the ongoing impeachment inquiry.
White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney admitted Thursday that those considerations played into Trump’s policy toward Ukraine. “Get over it: There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy,” he said.
Kendal Unruh, a former GOP activist from Colorado who led the unsuccessful effort to dump Trump at the 2016 party convention, said it was distressing to see Republicans tolerating the president’s actions. “The Republican Party has become completely corrupted to the core in their habitual defense of Trump’s behavior,” she said. “It’s sad to watch the death of a party that once actually stood for morality and the rule of law.”
Yet Yale psychiatrist Lee said increasing pressure on Trump with the threat of impeachment will create a far greater danger to the country than the mere diminishment of a political party.
“His emotional drive to project all his own corruption and ineptitude onto others will overwhelm any ability on the part of others to correct or redirect his lies,” she said. “This drive will become more severe with greater pressure and, paradoxically, the sicker he is, the more effective his pathology will be in overcoming any resistance, starting with himself.”

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations
November 1, 2019
by Dr. Peter Janney
On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.
Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.
Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.
After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.
The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.
When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..
A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.
The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.
Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks. ”
Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.
Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas in 1993 when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publication.

Conversation No. 70
Date: Thursday, February 27, 1997
Commenced: 6:15 PM CST
Concluded: 6:38 PM CST

RTC: Gregory? Have I interrupted your dinner?
GD: Not at all. I eat later, if I think about it that is. I thought you’d be in bed by now, Robert. A problem?
RTC: Actually, yes, there is…or might be. Do you have some time there?
GD: Sure. Not a problem.
RTC: It’s about that Atwood person we spoke of earlier. Remember the one?
GD: Oh, yes, I do remember Atwood. Did old Critchfield off him?
RTC: No, not as I understand but there is unhappiness about Atwood’s proclivity to talk to the wrong people and you are certainly considered the wrong people. By Critchfield’s crowd. Jim does not like me any more over that Angolia business but one of our mutual friends was in touch with me yesterday about this and I thought I ought to discuss it with you. There are, or were, certain aspects to Atwood’s activities, both on and off the board, that there is some anxiety about. It’s known he had very dubious dealings with you six or seven years ago and you are considered to be a loose cannon. Atwood is considered to be a loose mouth and in my calling, that is not considered to be either wise or conducive of a long and happy life. Might I ask you what, if anything, Atwood discussed with you concerning his activities with the Company? Can you recall?
GD: My memory is very good, Robert, as you might have noticed.
RTC: I have. At times a great asset, Gregory, but at other times, a great liability. If you take my meaning?
GD: Oh, I do. Atwood? I got to know him while I was living in Munich in ’65. I was selling German militaria via the Shotgun News….
RTC: And that was….?
GD: Is. It’s a trade paper for gun and military collectors. In Hastings, Nebraska. I was a guest of Franzi von Otting and I used his name. Con premise and he got a percentage of the take. Anyway, Jimmy saw the advert and since he was in Germany, decided to look me up. He wrote and made an appointment and I met him in the lobby of the Vierjahrezeiten.
RTC: Pardon?
GD: A posh Munich hotel. He was staying there with two tarts. Bargirl types if you know what I mean. He was very polite and civil. Slight southern accent. Anyway, we had a long conversation about the collecting trade. Jimmy had written a book on Nazi daggers and was, as he admitted over a drink or two, having these made up in Solingen and selling them. He was making very good money and was highly ambitious. Made up Hermann Goering’s wedding sword and shoved it off on some stupid collector and, as I recall, Hitler’s suicide pistol. A Walther with ivory grips. Got it on the cover of Argosy magazine and sold it to another sucker in Canada. Anyway, we had a talk about creative selling and, as I recall, he was interested in my expertise on the historical aspects. I pointed out to him that in the picture of the alleged Hitler gun, the maker was Walther but their factory was in Ulm, not in what was now the DR. He laughed and said, as I remember, ‘well…you caught me….’ and on we went. I don’t drink very much but he certainly could put it away. And we went out to a restaurant and continued the talking. I learned a lot about him, the more he drank, but he learned nothing about me. Considering everything, that was just as well. I know he had a good opinion of me because in ’90 we went to Austria and dug up some buried Nazi concentration camp loot an SS general buried there in ’45.
RTC: And who might that have been?
GD: A Slovene named Globocnik. Had been the Gauleiter of Vienna until Hitler sacked him for stealing.
RTC: I was told about him. Not a nice person.
GD: No, but you used him after his faked suicide. The Brits sold him to you and you sent him down to Syria to help the rag heads.
RTC: Gregory, you are most interesting and informative. And I hope you are also discreet.
GD: Oh, I can be. Why the interest in Jimmy?
RTC: It has slowly dawned on certain exalted people that perhaps you might have gleaned some forbidden information about brother Atwood in the course of your wild career. Do go on
GD: Well, I don’t know what was, or is, forbidden, and what isn’t.
RTC: Why not just go on and let me be the judge of that. Please continue about Atwood.
GD: I will. Atwood was one of your people and was not only involved in merchandising and otherwise making a profit selling fake German militaria…
RTC: By German, you specifically mean Nazi, don’t you?
GD: Yes, of course. I’ll tell you about the market in a few minutes. Right now, I am going to fill you in on what I learned from James. I give you some background here on the very off chance that you know nothing about it. Since at least 1981 and probably earlier, there exists a worldwide network of ‘free-standing’, or especially and specifically. no direct U.S. government ties companies, including airlines, aviation and military spare parts suppliers, and trading companies, set up that have been put to good use by the CIA and the U.S. government to illegally ship arms and military spare parts to Iran and to the Contras. And, of course, to smuggle people who can’t go by commercial airlines and, let us not forget, drugs
RTC: I rather wish you would forget about drugs. I don’t think brother Atwood was involved with drugs. Do go on.
GD: Yes. These companies were set up with the approval and knowledge of senior CIA officials and other senior U.S. government officials and staffed primarily by ex-CIA, ex-FBI and ex-military officers. I am correct here?
RTC: Yes. Go on.
GD: You will probably end up hating me if I do, Robert, but I note you asked me to continue.
RTC: I think I am above that, Gregory.
GD: OK. Now let’s look at the Iran Contra business. I know all about at least a part of this so we can go into it a little. Secord’s arms shipments, arraigned through the CIA, transferred weapons destined for Central America to Merex. This was known officially as Merex International Arms and was, and is, based in Savannah. The Merex address was occupied by Combat Military Ordinances Ltd., controlled by Jimmy Atwood. He had been in the Army in MI and then went to work for your people. James was involved in major arms trades with your sponsored international buyers, specifically Middle Eastern Arab states. Monzer Al-Kassar utilized the Merex firm for some of his weapons transactions with the Enterprise. Now Merex was originally set up, after the war, by old Skorzeny co-worker, one Gerhard Mertins. Gerhard had been a Hauptmann (captain to you, Robert) in the German paratroopers and got the Knight’s Cross in, I believe, ’45. After the war, Mertins went to work in Bonn and the Merex arms business was considered a CIA proprietary firm. Mertex was close to and worked with the BND, the German intelligence service evolved from the CIA-controlled Gehlen organization. Atwood was involved with Interarmco, run by Samuel Cummings, an Englishman who ran the largest arms firm in the world. Cummings died in Monaco because he had looted his CIA employers and found that principality safer than Warrenton, Virginia. Also connected with Atwood’s firm were Collector’s Armory, run by one Thomas Nelson, whose nickname was ‘Red Nelson’ because of his hair color, not his politics, and a George Petersen of Springfield, Virginia, and one Manny Wiegenberg, a Canadian arms dealer. Jimmy was heavily involved in your support of Canadian separatists and I know something of his role in supplying weapons and explosives to the Quebec Libré movement. The head of your Canada Desk was actively encouraging this group to split away from Canada. I know for a fact that your people do not want ever to mention this little historical aside.
RTC: No, we do not, Go on.
GD:Also, I know all about Atwood’s connections with Skorzeny and the IRA/Provo wing. I can give you chapter and verse on this one if you want it. One of Atwood’s Irish connections is the man who blew up Lord Louis Mountbatten in 1979 and I have a file on this as well in some safe and private place You might also be aware of the shipping of weapons into the southern Mexican provinces by Atwood and his Guatemala based consortium. Atwood had a number of ex-Gestapo and SD people on board, some of whom were wanted. I recall a former SS officer, Frederich Schwend who worked with your people and was down in Lima. Schwend had been trained by the OSS in the early 1940s after he had informed Allen Dulles that the German SS had hidden millions in gold, cash, and loot as the European war was winding down. Atwood knew about the Weissensee gold hoard that Müller told me about. Jimmy knew about it but I had the overlay so he courted me and we ended up, shovels in hand, in the beautiful mountains in ’90.
RTC: Thee are conflicting stories about that business. You murdered two British people as I understand it.
GD: No such thing, Robert. As I understand it, and I was there, they fell off the boat in the middle of the Caribbean. Such lies your people make up.
RTC: Well, there are always two sides to every story, Gregory. You are better than two cups of coffee, I must say. I think I ought to get some Pepto Bismol pretty soon. After the Treasure Island adventure, what happened next?
GD: To Atwood? Well, as Jimmy told me, about 1992, he and your Jimmy Critchfield, along with a Russian Jew, formed a partnership in order to obtain a number of obsolete Soviet atomic artillery shells which they then sold to the Pakistanis. I think the two of them kept the money and no one ever saw the Jew again. If you don’t know this, I can tell you that both Critchfield and the Interarmco people had supplied weapons to the rebels in Afghanistan during their long and vicious guerrilla activities against the Soviet Union. Critchfield also worked with the Dalai Lama of Tibet in a guerrilla war against Communist China and headed a CIA task force during the Cuban missile crisis. He ran regional agency operations when the U.S. and the Soviets raced to secure satellites first in Eastern Europe, then in the Middle East. And note that in the early 1960s, Critchfield recommended to the CIA that the United States support the Baath Party, which staged a 1963 coup against the Iraqi government that the CIA believed was falling under Soviet influence. Critchfield later boasted, during the Iran-Iraq war that he and the CIA had created Saddam Hussein.
RTC: Gregory, where in the sweet hell did you get all of this?
GD: From Atwood when he was drunk.
RTC: You’ve just guaranteed that he will pass to his reward very soon. Does that bother you?
GD: I never liked him. He tried to rip me off once but he was so crude about it that I have no respect for him. Shall I go on?
RTC: I have approach-avoidance conflicts here, Gregory. You might as well ruin the rest of my evening. Proceed.
GD: Are you sure? You don’t sound too happy.
RTC: I am not but do go on.
GD: As you wish. When Arab oil became paramount, your Critchfield became your national intelligence officer for energy and was also an energy policy planner at the White House. He also fronted a dummy CIA corporation in the Middle East known as Basic Resources, which was used to gather OPEC-related intelligence for the Nixon administration. . Critchfield was the chief of the CIA’s Near East and South Asia division in the 1960s and a national intelligence officer for energy as the oil shortage crisis began in the early 1970s. Of course your people, along with the oil barons, forced the price of oil up and up. My, I wonder how much money you all made. Oh well, not important here. Critchfield retired in the mid ‘70s and ended up as both a consultant and the CEO of Tetra Tech International, a Honeywell Inc. subsidiary and which managed oil, gas, and water projects in the strategic Masandam Peninsula. This, in case your geography is weak, is located on the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the West’s oil is transported. And at the same time, Critchfield was a primary adviser to the Sultan of Oman, focusing on Middle East energy resources, especially those in Oman.
RTC: I should never have asked you about this.
GD: The Bible says ask and ye shall receive.
RTC: Yes. We can forget the Bible here. It has no part in the intelligence business. You mentioned Merex. Do you know of other friendly assets?
GD: Surely, Try Aero Systems, Arrow Air, Global International, and how about Zenith?
RTC: Did you get these names from Atwood?
GD: Of course I did. I told you Jimmy was not discreet while he was drinking. I listened to his tales of self-importance and remembered it all. Oh, and I write it up as well.
RTC: Gregory, for the Lord God’s sake, if not mine, or more important, yours, do not discuss any of this with anyone else, your son or people like Willis Carto. If you aren’t careful, Critrchfield will have you eliminated. I shall have to warn him off on that topic but…I mean why would Atwood tell you such terrible things and if he told you, who else could he have told?
GD: One of his German whores, probably. Jimmy goes on and on.
RTC: So I note. And we can ring the curtain down on that one ASAP.
GD: From your reaction, Robert, I assume Jimmy was accurate.
RTC: No comment but Atwood is a dead man.
GD: Well, I might have gotten my insights from the back of a Wheaties’ box but Jimmy is a better candidate. Do you know why I dislike Jimmy and would frame his death notice? His wife stuck with him when he was arrested for tax evasion in smuggling in the ‘60s and as a mark of his appreciation, he deserted her and his two daughters to run off with one of his bar girls. The rest of his activities are one thing but I do not tolerate such domestic treachery. Do you think I’m being too critical?
RTC: What a question. Who cares about his wife and children? This man has gone way beyond the bounds. Way beyond. Of course I believe you. You could never have made all that up and I can assure you it was never in the New York Times. They might know some of it but they wouldn’t dare publish it. No, you got it from Atwood or someone connected with him. Ah, well, I did ask and I did receive. They hate you Gregory, they hate you with a passion but at the same time, they are scared shitless of you. They would have killed you some time ago but others counseled them against it. Who knows what you put down on paper? If you were run over by a truck in the middle of a shopping mall or attacked and eaten by a leopard in your own living room, who knows what might find its way out of some hiding hole and into the public? The public is happy with its football games and beer so we had best not disturb them with such stories.
GD: They might make a good movie out of all this.
RTC: Never, Gregory, I can promise you that. A studio that even considered this would be bankrupt within a few months. No, none of this will ever see the light of day and if you want to continue walking around, remember that silence is golden.
GD: I have no problem with gold. Just think of all that looted concentration camp gold Jimmy and I dug up.
RTC: Yes and I understand you cheated him out of his share.
GD: When thieves fall out, Robert, honest men prosper.
RTC: Meaning no disrespect but do you consider yourself to be an honest man?
GD: Selectively, Robert, selectively. And Jimmy?
RTC: Don’t make book on his seeing Christmas.

(Concluded at 6:38 PM CST)
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Conversations+with+the+Crow+by+Gregory+Douglas

Encyclopedia of American Loons
Mark Sircus

Marc Sircus is a near-legendary crank and promoter of cancer woo, perhaps most familiar for his Transdermal Magnesium Therapy, which is not something you should get involved with under any circumstances. Sircus, like many quacks, are fond of adding meaningless alphabet soups to his name, and usually titles himself with “O.M.D” (“oriental medicine doctor”, which does emphatically not have anything to do with doctor or medicine, but does convey a hint of racism), as well as “Ac.” (probably “acupuncturist”) and “DM (P)”, which is new to us but may have something to do with pastoral medicine. None of the “credentials” are worth the price of the paper on which they are printed, if they are printed anywhere at all, but they are apparently good for marketing purposes. We encourage people to ponder why Sircus feels the need to add meaningless letters to his name in his promotion materials given that readers are unlikely to have the faintest clue what they are supposed to be short for, and Sircus presumably knows that they don’t.
Sircus is so into cancer woo that he is even associated with the delusional rantings of Tullio Simoncini (both are apparently sources trusted by people like Joe Mercola). According to Sircus, “[c]ancer is, fundamentally, a relatively simple oxygen deficiency disease and the use of bicarbonate increases oxygen carrying and reaching capacity.” Or in other words: “I don’t have the faintest clue about physiology, but I am merrily making up nonsense” (explanation here if you need it). The idea that sodium bicarbonate is an efficacious treatment for cancer must count as one of the most idiotic (and vile) disciplines of cancer woo out there – though the competition is fierce – relying as it does on blatantly false, conspiracy-theory driven delusions about what cancer actually is. According to Sircus, however, and his book Winning the War on Cancer, “[s]odium bicarbonate happens to be one of our most useful medicines because bicarbonate physiology is fundamental to life and health.” This is not how “because” works (and that is not the only problem with the claim). Sircus has observed, though, that many chemotherapy treatments include sodium bicarbonate, and asks whether it could be that the results one sees when using chemo and sodium bicarbonate is the result of the latter rather than the former, and promptly concludes that it is. “There are no studies separating the effects of bicarbonate from the toxic chemotherapy agents, nor will there ever be,” claims Sircus, suggesting a conspiracy. In reality, of course –Sircus isn’t even close to reality – sodium bicarbonate has been provided as part of a chemotherapy regimens not to treat the tumor but to protect the kidneys, given that certain chemotherapy regimens cause massive tumor cell lysis, though it is less commonly added these days since questions have been raised over whether it is actually beneficial. (Moreover, a controlled trial where one group of cancer patients only gets sodium bicarbonate without chemo is not very likely to pass ethical review boards, for obvious reasons.) Bah, details: Sircus has a panacea and a conspiracy theory to underpin the claims on its behalf; details are irrelevant. Instead, Sircus goes on to claim that baking soda can cure H1N1, too
Sircus is the leader of something called the International Medical Veritas Association (remember Badger’s Law!), which is apparently different from the infamous HIV/AIDS-denialist, antivaccine Medical Veritas International organization (Badger’s Law predicts such confusing similarities among these kinds of organizations), and also writes the IMVA blog. A telling entry on the blog is his “Cancer Still a Mystery to Medical Science”, discussed here. You can already guess the gambit he tries to use, can’t you? Yes, there is still a lot of stuff scientists don’t know about cancer – that’s why they do research – and no, that doesn’t mean that you get to fill the gaps with whatever unsupported bullshit you fancy. In fact, Sircus goes one step further: he is claiming that physicians are deliberately making money by “complicating” the subject of cancer. To Sircus and the quacks, cancer isn’t “complicated;” the complexity of cancer is just part of a conspiracy, and/or the myopia of scientists blinded by the “reigning paradigm” that cancer has something to do with cells or DNA (the “cherished chosen belief system” of scientists and physicians who defend it with “fanatical fervor”); according to Sircus, that is “just […] a theory”. The rest of the post is a long list of familiar cancer quackery, including vitamin C quackery, where Sircus cites a recent study published in Cancer Research to support his case – or rather, he doesn’t cite the study, but a news story about the study that completely misrepresents its findings, and then ignorantly proclaims that “[o]ncologists never made it to first grade as far as knowledge of nutrition and its role in health and disease.” It’s hard to decide whether to laugh or to cry.
So, what’s really the cause of cancer? Well, I think it’s worth quoting him at some length: “The germ theory of cancer is quite legitimate though medical authorities continue to crucify Dr. Tullio Simoncini for his focus on fungus and yeast as a central part of the cancer paradigm. Long before Simoncini walked the earth we have had research connecting fungus to cancer. Fungus is a microbe, and many scientists believe viruses, fungi and bacteria are all different stages of the microbe life cycle. Neither Dr. Dannenberg nor Dr. Simoncini is a medical heretic but many subjects in our contemporary civilization are just too taboo.” One would have liked to know a bit more about the “many” scientists who don’t know the difference between fungi, viruses and bacteria (some suggestions as to where Sircus picked up the idea here), though even that claim isn’t nearly as ridiculous as the idea that Simoncini is anything resembling a legitimate scientist, however.
Sircus is, of course, also an anti-vaccine activist, advocating (in his post “String the Bastards Up”) killing scientists at the CDC for crimes existing only in his feverish imagination: “I think these people should be lined up against a wall. Actually there is no punishment that could possibly compensate for the suffering of autism and the tragedy of vaccine deaths” and “I am calling for the conviction and the worst possible punishment under the law for certain people in government who are in the medical field.” It’s unlikely that explaining to him that vaccines demonstrably do not cause autism would help much. This is what might happen if you are unable to distinguish reasonings from violent, paranoid fever dreams. And instead of executing them, “we are letting doctors in white coats inject poisonous heavy metals into babies and paying them well for it,” laments Sircus. As telling as his baseless, conspiracy-driven hatemongering against those who are actually helping people, is the fact that no vitriol is directed against his fellow bicarbonate sodium-quacks, who are demonstrably killing people, and being paid for it, by injecting people in desperate situations with what is, in effect, poison.
Part of it all is, of course, motivated by Sircus’s hatred for real medical doctors, in particular oncologists: “Oncologists certainly don’t cure cancer since it’s illegal to even speak about curing cancer and since most of their patients die no matter what the doctors say or do.” None of those claims are remotely true of course. It is, however, true that real doctors tend to reject most of the nonsense Sircus promotes, which makes it hard for people like Sircus not to ascribe them malicious intentions. As for his own views, we are still waiting for his magnum opus, the (ostensibly) 3000-page Conquering cancer, which supposedly sums up Sircus’s various views on the topic (one recent(?) addition being electrochemical cancer quackery, discussed here), as well as his fundamental misunderstandings and lack of understanding of basic biology, physiology or medicine.
Another one of his inventions is “natural allopathic medicine”, which according to him and his e-book is a “new therapeutic principle that revolutionizes both allopathic and naturopathic medicine offering a radical shift in medical thought and practice” that focuses on “pH management, cell voltage, magnesium and iodine medicine, cannabinoid medicine, carbon dioxide medicine, re-mineralization of the body, increasing oxygen transport and oxygenation of the tissues, opening up of blood vessels, saturation and healing of cells with concentrated nutrition via superfoods, breathing retraining, emotional transformation processing, detoxification and removal of heavy metals and radioactive particles.” Apparently you can use it to treat Ebola: “Instead of using toxic pharmaceuticals that diminish the immune system by further driving down nutritional status we use we treat and cure through the fulfillment of nutritional law.” It’s hard not to suspect that his success criterion is “no one complained”. Evidence? “Just ask an emergency-room or intensive-care-ward doctor right after he has injected magnesium chloride or sodium bicarbonate to save someone’s life.” I think we can safely say that emergency room doctors are not using magnesium chloride or sodium bicarbonate in emergency situations for their nutritional value. He doesn’t offer any other evidence for any of his claims, apart from some cherry picking and misrepresentations of some papers thrown together in a speculative jumble.
Diagnosis: When you, regarding a topic you know nothing about, disagree with everyone who knows anything about it, you should at least stop to consider the possibility that you are wrong before you conclude that everyone else is in a nefarious conspiracy against you. But that’s what people like Sircus, who have staked their careers on the second of those options, need you not to do. It does seem, however, that Sircus is a true believer rather than an outright fraud, though it’s an interesting question whether there really is a legitimate distinction to draw when you encounter characters like Mark Sircus.