The President's Daily Brief - President's Daily Brief - April 8th, 2022

Episode Date: April 8, 2022

On today's PDB - a stunning report out of the intelligence community. They're releasing unvetted, unreliable intelligence to the press regarding the war on Ukraine. Next, the FBI has apparently hacked into American companies over the past several weeks, all to patch, holes and computer networks that could have been otherwise exploited by Russian cyber attackers. An alarming update on who America is funding in Ukraine. Including information about the infamous Azov Battalion. The governor of Texas has released a plan that states that he's going to start shipping illegals caught on the border directly to Washington, D.C. Lastly, the laptop from hell Hunter Biden emails, keep getting uglier. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's April 8th. You're listening to the President's Daily Brief. I'm your host Brian Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. It's a big morning for national security issues. Here's what we're covering in today's brief. First up, a stunning report out of the intelligence community. They're releasing unvetted, unreliable intelligence to the press regarding the war on Ukraine. We're going to talk about why they're doing that and how reckless it is. Next, the FBI has apparently hacked into American companies over the past several weeks, all to patch holes in computer networks that could have been otherwise exploited by Russian cyber attackers. Now, is that a good thing? Depends on whether you trust your government.

Finally, an alarming update on who America is funding in Ukraine, those opposition fighters battling Moscow. The bottom line, we're getting into bed with some very bad people, and I don't think it's going to end well. More to follow. Plus, I'm watching two other stories closely over the weekend. First, the governor of Texas has released a plan, though a bit light on details, that he's going to start shipping illegals caught on the border directly to Washington, D.C. Old move. Also, the laptop from hell, Hunter Biden's shady emails keep getting uglier, incriminating Joe Biden directly,

who has declared he was never involved in Hunter's business dealings. But that doesn't look to be true. All up next on the President's Daily Brief. First up, and what a story this is, Joe Biden has ordered the release of unverified, unvetted, low-quality intelligence to America's media about what Russia may or may not be doing in Ukraine. In other words, he's feeding us gossip and rumors. This comes from a report from NBC, from an individual that I actually know to have good sources within the CIA. He quoted one intelligence official who said proudly, the stuff we put out doesn't have to be solved.

intelligence. In other words, it just has to get the job done of apparently scaring the world. So let me share with you how this has worked. Do you remember the story when the Biden administration said that Russia was preparing to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine? Joe Biden said it directly, in fact. It turns out that wasn't true. And they knew that the intel suggesting it was true was actually low quality and unreliable, but they said it anyway. Another example, Biden's people claimed that in the run-up to the war, a couple months back, Russia would put out a video featuring fake corpses of mutilated civilians in eastern Ukraine. But that story was fake, too.

There was no good intel saying that that would actually happen. Also fake, U.S. officials claimed that they had intelligence suggesting Putin is being misled by his own advisors, who were afraid to tell him the truth. Well, it turns out that that was just a guess by analysts. There was no hard intel. Finally, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told a Chinese counterpart that Beijing had better not help Russia secure weaponry. Now, that was a reasonable concern. But the story was sold to the American people as though we had intel suggesting it was on the verge of actually happening.

It wasn't. No Intel said that. So the question is, why are they doing this? Well, one intel official said, we're trying to get inside the mind of Vladimir Putin. Okay, here's why you should care about this story. First, let's assume that the intel officer saying that the CIA is just trying to get inside Putin's head was being serious. Well, that proves only one thing, that the intelligence community is being led by morons because Vladimir Putin is going to do whatever the hell he wants to do, no matter what fake intel we release to gin up fake stories. In other words, it's an operational embarrassment, a failure to achieve operational objectives.

Second, this use of fake intel has a very dark and a very dangerous past. When we've done it, it has led to the death of people, of nations, and a total collapse of the American people's support of the intelligence community. Let me explain. If you remember the war in Iraq, you'll remember the issue of weapons of mass destruction. Iraq supposedly had them. Vice President Dick Cheney said so. CIA director George Tenet said so.

Slam dunk, in fact, is how he described the possibility of, whether or not WMD were in Iraq. Slam dunk, they would be. Well, it turns out all that was a lie. There was no WMD. The intel from that fake story came from one source, codenamed Curveball. Mr. Curveball was lying.

He knew nothing. But the job of the intelligence community was to figure that out, to vet him, to corroborate his information, to then give that knowledge to policymakers with medium or high degrees of confidence that, in fact, Iraq had WMD. But the Intel community failed to do that.

The American people were sold a lie, and we started a war. Trillions of dollars spent, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Iraqis dead, and then thousands of American warfighters also died or came home without arms or legs or their minds terribly broken. When I worked at the CIA, this story, the curveball disaster, left a deep scar on all of us. no operator or analyst would ever fall for that again, we told ourselves. But now we're doing it again. In fact, people are celebrating the tactic of releasing garbage intel to the American people, all to convince you and I of a story in Ukraine that isn't true.

So the question this morning that should be running through your mind and mine is where does this lead? I don't know why Joe Biden is doing this. Maybe it's to gin up support for another unnecessary war. it's certainly possible. But I do know this. You now have every reason not to trust anything the Biden administration says about Ukraine. Because we now know that they're putting out disinformation, propaganda. It's coming from your government, coming from your spies and analysts who know damn well better not to do what they're doing after the curveball fiasco. But here they are, playing along with Biden like it never happened. The bottom line, folks, is that the intelligence

community I am sorry to say has lost its way. It has lost its credibility. So be very careful and very skeptical when you hear reporting based on their intelligence. Instead, turn to people you trust to help you discern the truth from fiction, because we now know that fiction is what they're pumping into America's minds, or God only knows what objective. You tell yourself, no one wants your college-era band teas, but on Deep Hop, people are searching for exactly. exactly what you've got. You once paid a small fortune for them at merch stands. Now, a teenager who calls them vintage will offer that same small fortune back.

Sell them easily on D-pop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. Who knew your questionable music taste will be a money-making machine? Your style can make you cash. Start selling on D-pop, where taste recognizes taste. Our next story and a very important one, we know that the Russians are looking for ways attack America for our role in Ukraine. Cyber attacks are the most likely thing that they'll do, and I've spoken about this before. This morning, we have new reporting that the FBI is trying

to stop these possible cyber attacks, but there's a very big catch. Let me explain. In mid-March, the FBI got secret court approval to remove Russian malware from computer networks around the world, including inside the United States. I've confirmed this with my own sources. But in some cases, to remove the malware, the FBI chose to hack into American companies without their knowledge. Again, I want to emphasize something. There's no doubt that the Russian cyber threat is real. I know it from my own experiences. I've been warning about it. Folks, we have declared war on Russia, so we should expect to get hit in return, both here in the homeland and abroad. But here's the problem with this hacking story. Do you trust the FBI

in general or with those hacking powers? Do you trust they won't abuse that power? Let's refresh our memories. In May of 2017, then FBI director James Comey leaked sensitive, classified information to the New York Times to damage then-President Donald Trump. Comey admitted that he did this in order to create public outrage that in turn would force the appointment of a special counsel to look into the Trump-Russia allegations. Allegations, by the way, that we now know and Comey knew then were total garbage. In other words, FBI leadership abused its powers to be. to bring down an American president.

We also know that during the same time, another FBI official, a man named Kevin Klysmith, lied to a secret FISA court in order to conduct surveillance on Carter Page, who was connected to the Trump campaign. That FBI official, Mr. Kline-Smith, has since admitted that he fabricated evidence to keep alive a part of the Mueller investigation into President Trump.

In other words, in the last five years, the FBI, your government, has given you every reason, not to trust them. And again, I want to emphasize that we're not talking about some low-level FBI officials. We're talking about the FBI director and an FBI officer who was a key member of the Hillary Clinton email scandal, the Trump-Russia collusion investigation, and the Mueller team. Now, there's supposed to be oversight of the FBI to include operations like hacking into American companies to protect them from Russian shenanigans. But we know with absolute certainty that the system of oversight is broken. Congress,

isn't watching. The courts aren't watching. The press certainly isn't watching. In fact, they're cheerleading. The bottom line is this. In theory, we need the FBI to help protect us using operations like hacking into companies, even if those companies are unaware. The same is true of operations at the CIA and NSA. But until we have reliable oversight, until you can have faith that the leadership of those agencies are faithful to their oaths and to the laws of the United States, you have every reason not to trust the FBI or their friendly hacking operations. Sadly, that's true at this very moment when we need protection from very real adversaries like Russia and China. This is Euphoria Calvin Klein, the new elixir collection featuring three perfume

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to support his plea for help. You may recall that Maripal is a Ukrainian city under ungodly siege by Russian forces. The man in the video said he was fighting in Maripal as a proud member of the Azov Battalion. More on that group in a second. But Zelensky's celebration of the Azov Battalion caused a firestorm in Athens with Greek parliamentarians and the prime minister saying the video and Zelensky's celebration of it, was mistaken and inappropriate. That's a quote. Over the past 24 hours, additional anger has been directed at Zelensky in Greece echoed across political factions throughout the Greek capital. So let's talk about this Azov Battalion, because it's a real story, and it's creating real outrage in places like Greece. And by the way, you're funding this battalion, and you're providing them

weaponry. Look, the Azov Battalion is a paramilitary group founded in 2014 during the conflict in eastern Ukraine against Russian forces. It's a military wing of two related extremist movements, the Patriot of Ukraine and the Social National Assembly. Its leader, Colonel Andrei Baletsky, is on record as saying Ukraine's purpose, and listen to this, is to lead the white races of the world in a final crusade against inferior races led by the Jews. That's a direct quote. Battalion members and supporters call this man there, and I quote again, their white ruler. Not surprisingly, battalion members, which are about 10,000 number, 3,000 of which were in Maripal, these folks largely embrace Nazi beliefs, with their uniforms and tattoos,

all celebrating Nazi symbols like swastikas and the SS. Now, the United States initially said they wouldn't train or support battalion fighters because of these links to extremism, obviously. But that ban has been lifted, and Joe Biden has reportedly told Zelensky that the has got to tone down the extremist rhetoric because, you know, bad PR, obviously. But in a recent interview, the great white leader has said that he's a changed man, of course, he's waved off his past, but added that he still believes virtually everything that's gotten him his bad reputation. If this sounds familiar funding bad people to do our bidding, it should.

In the 1970s and 80s, the United States funded directly and indirectly another group of extremists, Islamic extremists in Afghanistan to defeat the Soviet Union. Now, when Moscow left Kabul defeated, we left too. But the Islamic radicals we funded didn't leave. They took over Kabul. And then they gave Osama bin Laden a safe haven to attack America. And he did. Also, you may be reminded that the U.S. funded the free Syria army over the past 20 years. The goal was to build up a force that would topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. That army, the army you funded with your taxpayers, dollars was made up of Islamic extremists. Some of them were former members of al-Qaeda, quote-unquote former, of course. Now, we were told that they were moderate extremists, whatever the hell that is.

And so the same story appears to be unfolding in Ukraine as it did in Afghanistan and Syria. In this case, however, we're funding neo-Nazis. The great irony, by the way, is that last April Joe Biden said that the greatest terror threat to America is white supremacy. And now he's funding it. You're funding it. The upshot is this. Sometimes in the world of spies and covert action, the enemy of your enemy is your friend. But it's a nasty, deadly little game, isn't it? And if history is any guide, it usually comes back to Bidus. And I'm guessing it will in Ukraine too. Two final stories that I'm going to be watching over the weekend. First, the governor of Texas has released a plan called Operation Lodestar that calls for Texas authorities to ship illegal immigrants

on the border directly to Washington, D.C. That's but one part of his effort to shore up the southern border that by all reasonable accounts is being overrun. Other parts of his plan include Texas officials positioning themselves at 28 border crossings to better intercept lawbreakers, adding Texas National Guard members with riot gear, and a major boat blockade on the Rio Grande. Now, there are some questions about the legality of parts of Operation Lone Star. For instance, the governor's website says that a migrant must volunteer to be transatlantic. and show documentation from the Department of Homeland Security when riding a bus or an airplane, presumably to Washington, D.C. Let's see if that actually happens. But frankly, with the illegal

border crossings at record levels and getting worse, many Americans are looking for someone to do something, anything, to secure the border. Let's see what happens. The other story we'll be watching this weekend, the laptop from hell, Hunter Biden's shady emails from the laptop, keep kidding, uglier, incriminating Joe Biden directly, despite Joe's denials he's never been involved with or helped Hunter vacuum up foreign cash ever. The most famous email so far, of course, is Hunter saying that the big guy, presumably Joe Biden, is going to get a 10% cut of one particular Chinese foreign deal. But we also know that Joe and his wife Jill were set to get keys to a shared office with Hunter. That was, in fact, from another email that we've

discovered recently. And now there are other emails talking about how Joe Biden is going to write letters of recommendation for the college applications of Hunter's business partners. These are Chinese business partners connected to the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing. This story gets worse by the day. And folks, we are going to follow it until the end. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, you have your morning brief. I'm Brian Dean Wright. Follow me on Twitter, if you would. My handle is at Brian Dean Wright. That's Brian with why. write with a.W. I will see you again Monday morning at 6 a.m. for the latest edition of the President's Daily Brief. And as always, as I leave you this morning, I remind you of the creed of

every good spy and every smart American. It's from John chapter 8, verse 32. And you shall know the truth. The truth shall make you free. Good day. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. because behind every headline is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com.