Justice Department Hosts Election Threats Task Force Meeting

A covert team of Israeli contractors who claim to have manipulated more than 30 elections around the world using hacking, sabotage and automated disinformation on social media have been exposed in a new Guardian investigation.

The unit is run by Tal Hanan, a former Israeli special forces operative who now works privately using the pseudonym “Jorge”. In more than six hours of secretly recorded meetings, Hanan and his team spoke of how they could gather intelligence on rivals, including by hacking Gmail and Telegram accounts.

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On the morning of January 20, 2021, the last day of his presidency, U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned Aviem Sella, the Israeli handler of American-born Jonathan Jay Pollard, a former intelligence analyst for the United States government. In 1987, as part of a plea agreement, Pollard pleaded guilty to spying for and providing top-secret U.S. classified information to Israel and was sentenced to life in prison for violations of the Espionage Act.

The U.S. intelligence community maintained that the damage to U.S. national security due to Pollard's espionage was far more severe, wide-ranging, and consequential than publicly acknowledged. At his sentencing hearing, U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger gave the court a memo that read:

“It is difficult for me, even in the so-called 'year of the spy,' to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by the defendant in view of the breadth, the critical importance to the U.S., and the high sensitivity of the information he sold to Israel. That information was intentionally reserved by the United States for its own use, because to disclose it, to anyone or any nation, would cause the greatest harm to our national security.”

On November 20, 2020, during the Trump Administration, Jonathan Pollard's parole expired and all restrictions were removed. On December 30, 2020, Pollard and his second wife moved to Jerusalem, Israel. The Pollards flew to Israel from the US state of New Jersey on board a private jet owned by US billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a Republican supporter of the Trump Administration. Upon their arrival at the Ben Gurion Airport outside of Tel Aviv, they were greeted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both knelt and kissed the ground before greeting him.

The Jewish/Israel Lobby actively works in the U.S. and U.K. to influence prospective government candidates and elected officials to move each country's foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction, oftentimes using antisemitism to restrict criticism and political activism.

Since the inception of Israel in 1948, there has been an international consensus that the future of Jerusalem must be the subject of negotiations between Israelis and the Palestinians, the indigenous people of Palestine.  However, during the 2016 Trump Administration, President Donald Trump, the most litigious and pro-Israel president in American history, provided Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with these unprecedented decisions:

• Recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel
• Moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem
• Closed the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, which functioned as a de facto embassy to the Palestinians
• Recognition of Israeli sovereignty of the township in the Golan Heights area, named as the Trump Heights

President Donald Trump effectively quashed the two-state solution in the Middle East with these dictatorial decisions, which have further emboldened Israel in its genocide of Gaza, Palestine.

Further Readings:

2022: Iraq Tribunal: The Israel Connection (Alison Weir)
2021: Israel’s Secret Arsenal: It’s Not So Secret Anymore
2019: The Planned Extermination of the Assyrian People and Culture
2017: International campaign is criminalizing criticism of Israel as ‘antisemitism’
1998: Israel's Economic Espionage in the United States
1995: Israel's Unauthorized Arms Transfers

1967: The Day Israel Attacked America, USS Liberty | Special Series (video) | Military Archive | Atour Archive

On July 10, 2020, Trump pardoned Roger Stone, a political consultant and lobbyist for the Trump presidential campaign.

On December 23, 2020, Trump pardoned Paul J. Manafort, he chaired the Trump presidential campaign from June to August 2016.

Wikipedia: List of people granted executive clemency by Donald Trump

DOJ: Pardons Granted by President Donald J. Trump (2017-2021)

• The Trump Campaign’s Collusion With Israel
  https://www.thenation.com/article/world/trump-israel-collusion
  https://www.atour.com/~aahgn/news/20230416a.html (archive)
• Disinfo black ops - A special investigation exposing the companies and states behind global disinformation.
• The secret world of disinformation for hire
• Revealed: the hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections
• International campaign is criminalizing criticism of Israel as ‘antisemitism’

Democracy on Trial (full documentary)
by PBS | Frontline

Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, Full Report (PDF) | Website

FRONTLINE investigates the roots of the federal criminal case against former President Donald Trump stemming from his 2020 election loss.

In March, 2024 Republican presidential nomination front-runner Trump is scheduled to begin standing trial on federal charges, including conspiracy to defraud the U.S., in connection with efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. He says the charges against him are politically motivated.

“Democracy on Trial” traces the road to this unprecedented moment, and examines the implications of the historic criminal case unfolding in the midst of a presidential election year. Drawing on court documents and revelatory interviews with elected officials, former government lawyers, House Select Committee witnesses and former committee staffers, authors and journalists, the documentary reports that the work of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack provided the groundwork for special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump and may offer insights into how the trial unfolds.

This journalism is made possible by viewers like you. Support your local PBS station here: https://www.pbs.org/donate

See also:

• PBS | Frontline | Democracy on Trial (full documentary) | PBS
• PBS | Frontline | Plot to Overturn the Election (full documentary) | PBS
• PBS | Frontline | United States of Conspiracy (full documentary) | PBS
• PBS | Frontline | The Mueller Report (full documentary) | DOJ Archive
• Select January 6th Committee Final Report and Supporting Materials Collection
  The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol released their final report on December 22, 2022. This page provides access to the report as well as additional supporting materials provided by the committee, including videos, transcripts, and other documents on file.
  January 6th Committee Full Hearings - Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 The Final Report