More than a year ago, then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe made a stunning series of declassifications—the full implication of which many in the legacy media either ignored or never fully grasped.

I believe this was due to mainstream media being handcuffed by many of the false narratives they had been peddling to the American public for a number of years about the Spygate scandal.

One of the explosive declassifications involved handwritten notes by then-CIA Director John Brennan, who had personally briefed then-President Barack Obama and several members of his national security council at the White House about intercepted Russian intelligence analysis.

The content of that intercepted analysis claimed that Hillary Clinton had approved a plan to smear the Trump campaign with a fake Russian collusion hoax that would be created by private operatives. (My earlier column about this can be found here.)

The Brennan notes, coupled with an investigative referral sent to the FBI, make clear that all the top DOJ and FBI officials involved in accepting fake evidence from private operatives during the course of the 2016 Presidential campaign knew they were being approached by people associated with the Clinton campaign.

These federal officials then started investigations of the Trump campaign and applied for federal surveillance warrants on Trump associates based on this fake information anyway.

The documentary evidence speaks very loudly and very clearly: none of these people at the federal agencies were fooled by either the fake Steele Dossier or the fake Alfa-Bank documents.

Not one of them.

James Comey, Peter Strzok, and Andrew McCabe, to just name three of the top people involved, knew all along who these operatives approaching them with these fake hoaxes were really working for.

They had been alerted in July 2016 about what Clinton’s campaign was preparing to do. And then both Comey and Strzok were alerted again in September of 2016 when they received the investigative referral from the CIA.

Yet despite this, Comey and Strzok nevertheless went ahead and took the Steele Dossier from the Clinton campaign’s operatives and made use of it for a federal surveillance warrant in late October of 2016.

Despite detailed rules and regulations mandating that all material facts in such a warrant be verified and that the documented evidence of that verification is placed in what’s called the Woods File, no effort appears to have been made to authenticate the key allegations used in the warrant against former Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.

In fact, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz extensively documented in a December 2019 report how the FBI didn’t even interview the man Steele named to the agency as his primary sub source until January 2017, when the warrant was up for the first of what turned out to be three renewals.

That’s always been the major scandal here, as far as the FBI is concerned. That somehow every single rule, regulation, and procedure about opening an investigation, filing a surveillance warrant, and then getting it renewed was deliberately subverted and bypassed.

In September 2020, when Comey was directly asked about that September 2016 investigative referral from the CIA alerting him to the fact the Clinton campaign planned to launch a series of fake Russia hoaxes targeting Trump and his campaign associates, Comey played dumb, insisting the memo didn’t ring any bells.

Of course, Comey cannot admit that almost two months before the Crossfire Hurricane team filed its FISA surveillance warrant with the court, both he and Strzok had been asked by the intelligence agencies to conduct an investigation on a rumored dirty tricks operation making use of private firms.

While the recent leaks to the mainstream news media by the targets of the Durham Special Counsel’s probe show he is presently focused on gathering more documentation about the crimes related to the Alfa Bank hoax, Alfa-Bank was always a minor act in the massive Spygate scandal.

The real heart of the scandal has always been the creation of the Steele Dossier, the FBI accepting it while knowing it was a hoax, and then FBI officials using the dossier as a pretext to spy on the Trump campaign.

As I have been saying for several years now, Carter Page was far from the only person who had his civil rights violated by this surveillance warrant that was granted on the basis of fraud. That warrant on Page gave the FBI a window into spying on an as of yet undetermined number of people in the Trump campaign, and then the Trump transition team following Trump’s election win.

Since the warrant was renewed three times and was only allowed to expire in September of 2017, the spying continued right on into most of the Trump administration’s first year in office—a relevant fact that very few people in the mainstream news media want to dwell on.

How many people ultimately ended up being surveilled based on that illegitimate warrant? I’ve been researching Spygate for five years now, and I can’t tell you that yet. The Durham Special Counsel’s Office likely could come up with a good estimate, but they’re not talking yet.

What we do know is that all these officials at the FBI who were involved in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation have a lot to answer for.

One thing is for sure, I don’t think any subsequent developments in the Durham investigation are going to be boring.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/nobody-at-the-fbi-was-fooled-by-clinton-campaigns-private-operatives_4080673.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Thomas Moore used to drive his truck into California to pick up cargo loads for years. He refuses to do that now.

He could tick off a mile-long list about why: overregulation, long wait times at the ports, too much traffic, and a lack of facilities for drivers.

“We just refuse to go into California,” Moore told The Epoch Times. “At 63 years old, I just can’t do it anymore.”

He’s not alone, he said.

“I would say that the numbers on that probably 10,000 per day who refuse to drive in California or New York. Just refuse to go there. They just won’t have anything to do with it,” Moore said from his home in Tuscon, Ariz., Nov. 2.

“You’re going to find a lot of anti-Biden people in truck driving but I’m not one of them. I wear a mask and I’m vaccinated.”

The ports Los Angeles and Long Beach continued to sort through a container logjam at the terminals this week as cargo ships waited for their turn to offload.

Trucker shortages were one of the many reasons blamed on the supply chain crisis that has placed the Southern California ports at center stage recently.

This week, the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach implemented new fines to attempt to spur faster clearing of the backlog of containers from its terminals.

The ports will charge $100 a day for each container left for more than nine days if the container will be moved by truck. Rail carriers will be charged after six days.

Operators appeared to answer the call. According to statistics provided by the Port of Long Beach, truckers and rail carriers are making progress taking cargo out of the terminals.

“Loaded import containers dwelling 9 days or longer in port terminals numbered 25,000 one week ago, and have declined 19 percent since then, showing these containers are being taken out of terminals,” port spokesman Lee Peterson told The Epoch Times in an email.

Total imports to be loaded from the port by Sunday were expected to be nearly 115,000 and exports were expected to total 30,000. Total empties to be processed were expected to total 87,000.

Meeting Regulations

Truckers coming into the ports face some of the country’s strictest regulations at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. In California, they are restricted to moving one container at a time.

They are also restricted to driving newer trucks with engines that meet California Air Resources Board (CARB) regulations.

California decided in 2008 to put a deadline on implementing emission standards for vehicles to meet the new standards, which started in January 2020.

By Dec. 31, 2022, no vehicles will be allowed on the roads that are not 2010 or newer without emission components that comply with the CARB regulations.

This has caused many truckers to steer clear of the state, Moore said.

Another regulatory issue that makes California unappealing for Moore is the fact that he can no longer run his truck engine during the night to heat or cool his cab. The state tickets drivers who run their engines and purchasing special air conditioning and heating equipment is expensive, he said.

The auxiliary power units can cost anywhere from $8,500 to $13,000 per unit installed, according to the North American Council for Freight Efficiency. They can cost about $3,000 each year to maintain.

The small units can keep the air conditioning and heaters running inside the truck cabs without the need to run the truck engines.

In California, a driver of a diesel-fueled vehicle with a gross vehicle weight rating of more than 10,000 pounds may not idle its engine for more than five minutes at any location and is not allowed to operate a diesel-fueled auxiliary power system for more than five minutes when located within 100 feet of a restricted area.

Operators of trucks equipped with sleeper berths must shut down the engine manually when idling for more than five minutes at any location and can be fined. The California Department of Motor Vehicles will not register, renew or transfer registration for any vehicle operator with a ticket until it is cleared.

A truck shortage has also caused some problems for companies and may be adding to the crisis, according to Paula Ventura of Monarch Truck Center.

“The issue is that there is a shortage of vehicles in California and across the United States at this time. The market expects that to be for the next two years,” Ventura said in a June 22 company video.

National Shortages

A change in rules for obtaining commercial driver’s licenses (CDL) has added to the national shortage of drivers, even though many opportunities exist for drivers, according to the operators of Elite Trade Academy in Dallas, Texas.

“There’s really a lot of opportunity in the truck driving industry. Drivers are so needed right now. Starting in February when the regulations changed and you have to attend an approved school, it’s really cutting down on the amount of schools available to the people who are interested in getting a CDL. Most CDL schools have a waitlist,” said co-founder Sierra Mosby, during an interview this month.

The school’s program takes about four weeks and about 200 hours of additional training to receive a commercial driving license.

American Trucking Associations’ (ATA) Chief Economist Bob Costello said Oct. 25 the current driver shortage has risen to an all-time high of 80,000.

“Since we last released an estimate of the shortage, there has been tremendous pressure on the driver pool,” Costello said. “Increased demand for freight, pandemic-related challenges from early retirements, closed driving schools and DMVs, and other pressures are really pushing up demand for drives and subsequently the shortage.”

The ATA pointed to the high average age of drivers, the inability of drivers to pass a drug test and the increasing number of states legalizing marijuana, and the lack of truck parking spots where drivers can stop to rest.

Moore said the lack of driver accommodations was one reason he no longer took jobs in the Southern California area, especially at the ports.

The lack of parking, no facilities at the ports for drivers to use the bathrooms, the traffic, and the driving laws requiring truck drivers to stay in the right lanes that cause truckers to constantly adjust their speeds.

“I could give you a list a mile-long,” Moore told The Epoch Times. “First five years of driving, I used to do all this stuff. Now, I refuse to go to California.”

Newest Regulations

The Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners unanimously approved on Nov. 4 a program that will charge cargo owners for using trucks that don’t meet rigorous clean air standards.

The port will begin collecting fines on April 1, 2022, at $10 per container hauled by a nonexempt truck. The Port of Long Beach is also implementing the fine.

The board initiated the program to the transition of zero-emission trucks at the Port of Los Angeles.

Zero-emission trucks are exempt from the rate, along with trucks that meet or exceed California’s low nitrogen oxide standard through Dec. 31, 2027.

Loaded containers entering or leaving marine terminals by on-dock rail will also be exempt.

The rate is set to expire on Dec. 31, 2034, according to the port.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/truckers-turn-away-from-la-ports_4088380.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

New allegations come to light after explosive bathroom rape case

Virginia’s Loudoun County school district is being rocked by sexual misconduct allegations, with three cases surfacing in recent days.

Loudoun County police on Thursday charged high school counselor Ann Barrett, who allegedly had an inappropriate relationship with an underage student from 2013 to 2015. Loudoun County Public Schools placed Barrett on leave in May after the case surfaced. The counselor turned herself in and was later released on bond.

Police are also investigating a boy at Harmony Middle School who allegedly groped male classmates last week in a hallway.

And on Tuesday, the Daily Mail reported that the 15-year-old “gender-fluid” high schooler who last month was found guilty of raping a classmate in a school bathroom sent nude photos of himself to a girl when he was in the fifth grade. The girl’s parents decided not to seek charges against the boy as long as the school district separated him from their daughter.

Sex crimes in Loudoun County Public Schools gained national attention last month when the Daily Wire reported on that 15-year-old’s two sexual assault cases. In May, the student raped a female peer in a bathroom. District superintendent Scott Ziegler claimed he was not aware of any sexual assault allegations during a June school board meeting, but internal emails showed that he knew of the rape the day it occurred. The perpetrator was transferred to another district high school while investigators processed DNA evidence against him. Last month, he allegedly sexually assaulted another student in a classroom at that high school.

Sexual assaults and other incidents in schools have driven concerns among parents that their children’s safety is being jeopardized by school officials who play politics, Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, told the Washington Free Beacon.

“I think there’s a real sense among parents right now that districts are neglecting basic things like student safety in favor of advancing a political agenda,” Neily said. “And you don’t have to have a letter by your name to be upset by that. It’s a really bad look for people, and voters are unhappy.”

Education issues turned out Virginia voters for Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin, who on Tuesday defeated Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe. Youngkin campaigned on greater parental involvement in public education, and McAuliffe tumbled in the polls late in the race after a gaffe during a debate in which he said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” The Republican won by a 2-point margin, just one year after President Joe Biden took the state by 10 points.

Students from at least 20 Loudoun County high schools staged a walkout last week to protest the district’s handling of sexual assault cases. More than 2,500 students participated, the Washington Post reported, and some students in nearby Arlington Public Schools participated in solidarity.

Neily said it should not be the responsibility of students to hold school officials accountable for their safety.

“It shouldn’t be incumbent on students to flag this,” Neily said. “What are the priorities of the Loudoun County School Board? What are you spending your time and finite resources on? Because if it’s not keeping children safe, people need to be held accountable.”

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/sex-crime-allegations-rock-loudoun-county-schools/