NSA/CSS
@NSAGov
https://twitter.com/NSAGov/status/1212237136050769921
Our vision is clear, #HappyNewYear!
We look forward to another year of protecting the nation by recruiting top talent, supporting our military, and defending forward.
https://twitter.com/NSAGov/status/1212237136050769921
Ghislaine Maxwell’s powerful contacts protecting her in safe houses
https://pagesix.com/2020/01/01/ghislaine-maxwells-powerful-contacts-protecting-her-in-safe-houses/
Ghislaine Maxwell — the British socialite who’s long been accused of serving as Jeffrey Epstein’s madam — is hiding in a series of safe houses and is being “protected because of the information she has on the world’s most powerful people.”
Maxwell, 58, allegedly procured young women and groomed them to have sex with Epstein and his wealthy pals, but she has remained out of public view after the convicted sex offender’s re-arrest last year and his death in jail in August. She has always denied any wrongdoing.
On the heels of a Reuters report that Maxwell was the main focus of an investigation by the FBI into several “people who facilitated” the dead pedophile’s alleged sexual abuse, a source tells Page Six: “Ghislaine is protected. She and Jeffrey were assets of sorts for multiple foreign governments. They would trade information about the powerful people caught in his net — caught at Epstein’s house.”
The source added of Ghislaine, who has homes in Manhattan and London, “She is not in the US, she moves around. She is sometimes in the UK, but most often in other countries, such as Israel, where her powerful contacts have provided her with safe houses and protection.”
The source added that Britain’s disgraced Prince Andrew had begged Maxwell to come forward and give an interview to protect him after he was accused of having sex with one of Epstein’s most vocal accusers, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, which he strongly denies. But Maxwell refused, forcing the prince to conduct his own disastrous interview. The source said: “Andrew pleaded with Ghislaine to publicly defend him. She carefully considered it, but decided no good would come of it (if she came forward). It isn’t in her best interests.” Lawyers for Maxwell didn’t get back to us.
The source also added, “If the US government was really interested in bringing in Ghislaine, the IRS would have looked at her tax returns and the income she may have got from Epstein and perhaps some of his powerful associates.”
https://pagesix.com/2020/01/01/ghislaine-maxwells-powerful-contacts-protecting-her-in-safe-houses/
People line up in Chicago to get legal marijuana on New Year’s Day
https://nypost.com/2020/01/01/people-line-up-in-chicago-to-get-legal-marijuana-on-new-years-day
Way to start the New Year off with a bong.
Chicagoans celebrated the passage of a new Illinois law legalizing marijuana by lining up in droves before sunrise to become the first in the state to legally wake and bake.
Footage shot by ABC 7 Chicago shows hundreds standing in an orderly queue, jumping up and down to keep warm as they wait in the cold.
Dispensaries began selling weed at 6 a.m., allowing residents 21 and older to purchase up to 30 grams of dried pot, five grams of cannabis concentrate and 500 milligrams of THC in edibles, according to the Hill.
Non-residents can only purchase half the amount.
The move makes Illinois the 11th state to legalize marijuana, and follows Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s recent pardons of more than 11,000 people with low-level marijuana convictions.
Recreational marijuana is legal in Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Vermont.
Another 30 states, including New York, allow the sale of marijuana for medical use.
https://nypost.com/2020/01/01/people-line-up-in-chicago-to-get-legal-marijuana-on-new-years-day
Actor Kevin Spacey Settles Sexual Assault Case Brought by Now-Deceased Accuser
https://twitter.com/NewsBreaking/status/1212112516123201538
Israeli cops disguised as Palestinians attacked by Jewish teens in no-Arabs-allowed settlement, 2 arrested
https://www.rt.com/news/477288-israeli-settlers-arrested-cops-palestinians/
Two teenage boys from the Jewish-only settlement of Bat Ayin have been arrested for attacking a pair of cops disguised as Palestinian laborers in what the right-wing legal aid group defending them has condemned as a “provocation.”
The youths pounced on the officers dressed as Palestinian technicians, hitting and pepper-spraying them, after the men refused to give a clear explanation of why they were walking around the center of the West Bank settlement on Tuesday, local media reported. They were subsequently taken in for questioning and, their lawyer Moshe Polsky has claimed, held overnight. The boys’ names were not released as they were both minors.
Polsky, defending the boys on behalf of right-wing legal aid group Honeinu, slammed the officers for “committing provocations” during a “stressful security period.” The police declined to comment on the nature of their undercover work to the press, and it’s easy to see how their presence might have raised a few eyebrows. Bat Ayin, unlike many other Jewish settlements in the West Bank, bars even Arab laborers from entry under a principle euphemistically called “Hebrew labor.”
The attorney told a different version of events in which the disguised cops - along with other police hiding nearby - “jumped” the boys, insisting the pepper-spray-wielding teen was forced to come to his friend’s aid only after he saw the other boy being attacked.
Settlers are often heavily armed, and anonymous residents told Arutz Sheva that the officers were lucky no armed inhabitant had passed by the confrontation. Settlement youth have been let off the hook for attacking police dressed as Palestinians before - the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court absolved three teens from charges they had attacked disguised cops, calling the officers’ actions “provocation.”
https://www.rt.com/news/477288-israeli-settlers-arrested-cops-palestinians/
Secretary Pompeo
@SecPompeo
https://twitter.com/SecPompeo/status/1212481507681611778
Spoke today with the Emir of #Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, and thanked him for Qatar’s solidarity in the face of Iran’s malign regional influence, including the December 31 attack on the
@USEmbBaghdad
.
https://twitter.com/SecPompeo/status/1212481507681611778