Facebook: Show Us Your Tits So We Can Protect You From Revenge Porn $FB

Facebook is asking users in Australia to send the social media giant nude pictures in order to test out a new system designed to prevent revenge porn.

The technology uses image recognition to identify potential revenge porn and promptly deletes it.

The move goes hand in hand with Australia’s recent crackdown on revenge porn, where one in five women aged 18-45 and one in four indigenous Australians are victims.

Australia’s e-Safety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant told the ABC News ”We see many scenarios where maybe photos or videos were taken consensually at one point, but there was not any sort of consent to send the images or videos more broadly,” adding that victims of ‘image-based abuse’ would be able to take action before photos were posted to Facebook, Instagram or Messenger.

Ms Inman Grant went further, saying ‘It would be like sending yourself your image in email, but obviously this is a much safer, secure end-to-end way of sending the image without sending it through the ether.‘

The Daily Mail reports:

Ms Inman Grant explained: ‘They’re not storing the image, they’re storing the link and using artificial intelligence and other photo-matching technologies.

‘So if somebody tried to upload that same image, which would have the same digital footprint or hash value, it will be prevented from being uploaded.’

If the technology works as expected, the photo should never appear on Facebook – even if a jealous ex tries to upload it.

Antigone Davis, head of global safety at Facebook, reassured that ‘the safety and well-being of the Facebook community is our top priority.’

She added: ‘As part of our continued efforts to better detect and remove content that violates our community standards, we’re using image matching technology to prevent non-consensual intimate images from being shared on Facebook.

‘These tools, developed in partnership with global safety experts, are one example of how we’re using new technology to keep people safe and prevent harm.’

While Facebook says they aren’t storing the nude pictures – and are instead keeping the “digital footprint” of the image on file, users may want to steer clear altogether, considering the company maintains a “non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license” to your photos per their EULA.

Apple is launching a public beta of their previously announced Apple Pay Cash feature – allowing people to send and receive cash inside the iMessage app on iPhones. Just in time for the holidays!

The program – which will compete with the likes of Square, Venmo, AliPay, and of course Android Pay, allows users running iOS 11.2 beta 2 to opt in using the iOS Public Beta program here. Once updated, an Apple Pay button will appear in the Apps section of Messages, allowing for the initiation of a payment. The payment feature can also be triggered by simply asking for money in a message or tapping on a message sent by someone else asking for money, TechCrunch reports. Parents whose kids are in college, prepare yourselves.

The beta is available for U.S. customers only with iOS devices on 11.2 or later and with two-factor authentication set up on their Apple ID.

The source of funding is any debit or credit card you have currently added to Apple Pay. Apple will charge no fees for money that is funded via debit cards and an ‘industry standard’ fee for credit cards, likely in the few percent. -TC

The first time a user is sent money, they can opt in to Apple Pay Cash to accept it, and will be issued a “virtual Apple Pay Cash” card, which can only be used to send money or pay for things via Apple Pay.

The Apple Pay Cash card in has an iridescent effect matched to gyro – just like a 'holo' on a real card. Someone in  design having fun. pic.twitter.com/8u3pI38tGB

— Matthew Panzarino (@panzer) November 7, 2017

The Apple Pay Cash card also functions as a transaction log for all Apple Pay purchases on the web or at physical locations.

Apple has an agreement with prepaid card issuer Green Dot to handle the back end of Apple Cash.

The mechanics of payments

“Sending and receiving works pretty much as you’d expect. If you ask for money in a text, say ‘hey you owe me $10 for movie tickets’, the other party can tap on the underlined dollar amount and send it. You can also use the Pay Cash app in Messages to send a formal request, they’ll see that and can tap to pay. When they send it you’ll get a notification and you tap on that to accept the money. You can choose to automatically accept payments or not in settings. The first time you use it you’ll have to accept the money within 7 days.

You can also send money directly from the Contacts app in iOS by tapping a contact and then the $ icon below their name. Siri, of course, is also involved and you can use it to send money or request money from a friend. Saying “ask Sally to pay me $10 for breakfast” will send that message via Messages and they can tap and pay” –TC

Twitter is officially rolling out its expansion to 280 characters across the entire platform, the company announced on Tuesday.

The upgrade follows a September beta test in which approximately 10 percent of users were granted 280 character privileges – noting at the time that the longer character count will allow users to express more of their thoughts without running out of room to tweet.

Thomas Wictor fans will be happy.

TechCrunch reports:

The decision was met with a fair amount of controversy, given that one of Twitter’s defining characteristics is the brevity of users’ posts.

Many argued that the increase to 280 characters would make Twitter less readable, as longer tweets filled their timelines.

Others suggested that Twitter’s focus on a feature no one really asked for was diverting its attention from more critical problems – like the rampant abuse, harassment and bullying it’s become known for unfortunately.

And still more argued that the expansion doesn’t really mean people will be able to better express themselves – they’ll just say the same thing, but use more words to do so.

One particularly funny tweet on that subject even went viral.

A redlined and edited version of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s 280-character tweet demonstrated how it was possible to shrink the tweet’s word count down without losing its meaning.

Twitter’s user base is somewhat split on whether the change would ruin Twitter. Tech media – outside of a couple level-headed responses – seemed to be opposed to the change.

In addition, one poll from last month found more Americans were in favor of the expansion than opposed to it, and the majority had no opinion.

Crammed timelines? 

Addressing concerns over timelines filled with wordy tweets, Twitter said that during the trial period, most people with 280 character privileges continued to tweet below 140 characters, most of the time – with only 5 percent of tweets exceeding the old limit, and only 2 percent over 190 characters.

Only one percent of tweets hit the new 280 character limit, the company reported.

Notably, Twitter claims that those who had more room to tweet received more likes, retweets and @mentions, gained more followers, and spent more time on Twitter. However, it didn’t quantify these findings with hard data. –TechCrunch

Tweet responsibly…

During Donald Trump’s visit to Japan over the weekend, the President and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe headed down to a koi pond before lunch to feed the fish and connect with nature.

Yet, instead of reporting things like “Trump and Abe strengthen ties,” or “Shinzo Abe agrees to freeze assets of 35 North Korean organizations,” Fake News networks decided to fabricate a lie about Trump being ‘disrespectful’ by dumping his entire box of fish food in the koi pond. 

CNN’s Veronica Rocha went full retard with the help of CNN White House producer Kevin Liptak – because apparently this took two people, tweeting “President Trump feeds fish with PM Shinzo Abe in Japan, then ours the entire box of food into the koi pond.”

Embedded in the tweet is a selectively edited .gif which zooms in on Trump tossing his koi food into the pond.

President Trump feeds fish with PM Shinzo Abe in Japan, then pours the entire box of food into the koi pond. pic.twitter.com/CQjGGf5k0J

— Veronica Rocha (@VeronicaRochaLA) November 6, 2017

CNN even tweeted the selectively edited clip from its official Twitter account:

Trump joined his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe in feeding fish, emptying the whole box of food into a koi pond https://t.co/Aho7J2YUru pic.twitter.com/dPB9xwKNOB

— CNN (@CNN) November 6, 2017

Rocha then writes the following in her Fake News article for CNN:

As an aide clapped loudly, Abe and Trump tossed spoonfuls of fish food into the pond. Then, with a look of enjoyment, Trump quickly poured his entire box of food into the pond.

Here’s what actually happened: 

ABE DUMPED FIRST! 

Hey @yashar, why are you lying about Trump? pic.twitter.com/nBkvqnRMLS

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) November 6, 2017

Not just CNN

CNN was just one of many outlets to push the fabricated narrative, however the whole thing began with Bloomberg’s Justin Sink, who was on scene in Japan when he tweeted “Towards the end, @potus decided to just dump the whole box in for the fish“): 

Trump and Abe spooning fish food into a pond. (Toward the end, @potus decided to just dump the whole box in for the fish) pic.twitter.com/WRFVaHqOEF

— Justin Sink (@justinsink) November 6, 2017

Oops! FakeNews then ran with Sink’s lie and the rest is history.

Once the truth was revealed, a swath of formerly smug liberal journalists quickly backpedaled and apologized – however some in the Twitterverse doubled down, claiming that yes, even though Abe dumped first, he only dumped a tiny bit vs. Trump’s TWO SCOOP POUR.

Sorry haters, we’re talking roughly a 40 grain difference:

Abe dumped first. pic.twitter.com/2WkauCdvTE

— Real Gnews (@Joseph_Cusumano) November 6, 2017

Presumptive negativity; always ready to pounce on @POTUS. Retweet rather than report. #factfree. https://t.co/mLSeIYwVjz

— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) November 6, 2017

I️ can confirm that 100% of the fish are dead. ?? pic.twitter.com/cotL7DAdpI

— Andy Swan (@AndySwan) November 7, 2017

Devin Kelley, the gunman who stormed into a Texas church Sunday, killing 26 people, had a disturbing and violent past, including a court-martial from the Air Force for fracturing his infant stepson’s skull, an arrest for animal cruelty in 2014, and frequent harassment of ex-girlfriends.

Due to his Court Marshall, Kelley was denied a license to conceal and carry, according to Texas governor Greg Abbott, however he bought the Ruger AR platform rifle used in the attack at a local sporting store in April 2016 by simply lying on the application about his criminal past.

Two ex-girlfriends told NBC News that Kelley stalked them after breakups.

“He was very sick in the head,” Katy Landry, a former girlfriend of Devin Patrick Kelley, told NBC News.

“Years after dating me he would try to bribe me to hang out with him,” Landry, who met Kelley in church as a teenager, told NBC News in a Facebook message. “He ended up assaulting me. He would stalk me by repeatedly calling me — even prank calling me, saying really weird stuff.

Brittany Adcock, 22, said she and Kelley dated when she was 13 and he was 18. “At the time I didn’t think much into it being so young but now I realize that there’s something off about someone who is 18 with someone who is 13,” she said.

Via NBC News: 

“He somehow would always find out my number although none of my friends talked to him and he would constantly call me until I blocked his number,” she said. “Then I’d get calls from an unknown number so I’ve had to change my number quite a bit.

“He would offer me money to hang out with him quite a bit. There has been one point that I called the police because he was just calling me so much I wanted to report harassment,” Adcock said.

“One time he told me I should move in with him and his wife and that he would take care of me as long as I walked around topless. Not long after, his wife messaged me and asked why I’m talking to her husband and I told her what he was saying and sent her screenshots and she then apologized and then I was blocked from speaking to her.”

When she broke it off, he continued to harass her, she said.

Animal Cruelty

Kelley was charged with animal cruelty in 2014 when he lived in Colorado Springs, CO. Witnesses told investigators they saw Kelley chasing a dog through their trailer park, attacking the animal when he caught it.

“The suspect then started beating on the dog with both fists, punching it in the head and chest,” the police report said, citing a witness. “He could hear the suspect yelling at the dog and while he was striking it, the dog was yelping and whining. The suspect then picked up the dog by the neck into the air and threw it onto the ground and then drug him away to lot 60.”

Kelley told police he was trying to stop the dog from attacking another animal.

Motive 

While a motive behind the shooting has yet to emerge, authorities noted that Kelley may have been involved in a domestic dispute, possibly targeting his mother-in-law who attended the church.

Mental health

In response to a question on whether gun control is the answer to mass shootings, President Trump, speaking from Japan, said “This is a mental health problem at the highest level,” calling the gunman “deranged.”

Q: Is gun control the answer to mass shootings like the one in Texas?

Pres. Trump: "This is a mental health problem at the highest level" pic.twitter.com/onSKm50yGD

— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 6, 2017

Active asset manager Franklin Templeton ($BEN) has just stepped into the world of passive investing with last week’s announcement of 16 market-cap weighted, single-country, and regional ETFs – the largest simultaneous NYSE listing in five years.

Franklin is taking direct aim at passive ETF offerings from BlackRock’s ($BLK) iShares.

Barron’s reports:

Price is key. Franklin Templeton is charging ultralow fees that will undercut those of the biggest player in this area, iShares from BlackRock (BLK). Franklin Templeton’s single-country ETFs for developed markets will charge just nine basis points, or 0.09%, while those for individual emerging nations will charge 19 basis points, or 0.19%. Market leader iShares, charges 0.48% to 0.64% for ETFs focused on developed lands and 0.48% and 0.93% for those for that invest in one developing country. “Beta should be cheap. It’s a competitive price that reflects value,” says O’Connor.

Todd Rosenbluth, of independent research firm CFRA, says Franklin Templeton picked a good spot to attack with low fees. “This is one of the few areas where there is not much competition other than iShares,” says Rosenbluth. WisdomTree (WETF) and Global X both have international funds that serve other investor needs, he notes.

It also happens to be good timing for specific international strategies. Retail investors don’t have much use for single-country ETFs, says Rosenbluth, but institutional investors may be looking for ways to double down on certain countries or regions, especially emerging markets, where performance often varies widely. And since Franklin Templeton’s funds track the FTSE Russell indexes, they can be used in conjunction with the broader Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets (VEA) and Vanguard FTSE Emerging Markets (VWO) ETFs. The iShares single-country funds track the MSCI indexes.

The funds, their tickers and their expense ratios are as follows:

• Franklin FTSE Australia ETF (FLAU), 0.09%
• Franklin FTSE Canada ETF (FLCA), 0.09%
• Franklin FTSE France ETF (FLFR), 0.09%
• Franklin FTSE Germany ETF (FLGR),  0.09%
• Franklin FTSE Hong Kong ETF (FLHK), 0.09%
• Franklin FTSE Italy ETF (FLIY), 0.09%
• Franklin FTSE Japan ETF (FLJP), 0.09%
• Franklin FTSE United Kingdom ETF (FLGB), 0.09%
• Franklin FTSE Europe ETF (FLEE), 0.09%
• Franklin FTSE Europe Hedged ETF (FLEH), 0.09%
• Franklin FTSE Japan Hedged ETF (FLJH), 0.09%
• Franklin FTSE South Korea ETF (FLKR)
• Franklin FTSE Brazil ETF (FLBR), 0.19%
• Franklin FTSE China ETF (FLCH), 0.19%
• Franklin FTSE Mexico ETF (FLMX), 0.19%
• Franklin FTSE Taiwan ETF (FLTW), 0.19%

“We’re trying to provide the investors with the flexibility to construct across active, across smart beta, across passive. This allows us to acknowledge that investors want to gain exposure to various markets and they want to do it in a cost-effective manner,” said Templeton’s head of capital markets, David Mann.

Anthony Weiner is set to begin his 21-month stay at the cushy Federal Medical Center in Devens, Mass. today in the hopes of curing his pedophilia.

The disgraced Democrat spent Sunday quietly holed up in his Union Square apartment, as his father brought coffee at around 11 a.m. before the two spent about five hours together, reports the New York Post.

Weiner pled guilty in May after sending lewd messages to a 15-year old girl between January and March of 2016 – including one picture of the disgraced former legislator lying in bed with his young son.

According to a January report in the Wall Street Journal, federal prosecutors were considering child pornography charges against Weiner. On May 19, Weiner surrendered to the FBI and struck a plea agreement to a single charge of transferring obscene material to a minor.

Under the agreement, Weiner will be required to register as a sex offender, along with three years of supervision upon his release. The disgraced Congressman will be eligible to leave 3 months early for good behavior.

The Federal Medical Center in Devens, Mass. is located on a former Army base about 40 miles northwest of Boston. Other infamous residents include Wall Street trader Raj Rajaratnam, who was busted for insider trading, as well as Peter Madoff – brother of Bernie Madoff who participated in his $20 billion ponzi scheme. Boston Marathon Bomber Tzhokhar Tsarnaev also resides at the facility on 23-hour-per-day lockdown.

Weiner described his crime as “rock bottom” following several years of sexting scandals that resulted in the loss of his seat in Congress, his reputation, and his marriage – after Weiner’s wife and longtime Hillary Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, filed for divorce in May.

As his sentence was handed down in September, Weiner, 53, broke down in tears. Weiner resigned from Congress in 2011 after it emerged  that he had been sexting with around six women over the course of three years.

In 2013, Weiner attempted a comeback bid for Mayor of New York, only to quit in disgrace after a second sexting scandal emerged, when it was revealed he had been texting a 22 year old women under the alias “Carlos Danger.”

On September 21, 2016, the Daily Mail dropped a bombshell, revealing that Weiner had been sexting with a 15 year old girl. As a result, electronic devices owned by Weiner – including his laptop, were seized as part of an investigation into the incident.

During the investigation, the FBI found several emails related to the Clinton email investigation on Weiner’s laptop – leading to the brief reopening of the Clinton case by former FBI Director James Comey shortly before the 2016 election. Clinton has blamed that decision, in part, for her monumental loss to President Donald Trump.

Originally published by ZeroHedge

While the Fed may still be confused by the lack of inflation, if only in the “real economy”, if not in financial assets, increasingly more analysts have realized that what the Fed has done is tantamount to blowing an roaring inflationary bubble, if largely confined to the realm of asset prices. And while we used a Goldman chart to demonstrate this divergence a little over a month ago…

… now it’s JPMorgan’s turn to undergo the proverbial epiphany.

In a note from JPM’s Jan Loeys, titled “Financial overheating a problem yet?”, the strategist writes that “growth-sensitive assets, such as equities, credit, cyclicals, and commodities continue to gain and outperform, keeping us comfortably in the Growth Trade. Growth prospects have been rising and accelerating over the past two months from the only slow and dispersed upgrades of the previous 12 months. By now, we are in a full-fledged and globally synchronized move up in growth optimism.” Perhaps, but there is a catch as JPM unwillingly concedes:

The speed of these upgrades and asset price rallies is both exhilarating and scary. The faster we rally, the greater the joy, but the more one should be worried about the eventual reckoning. How far from now is that and what should we do about it?

JPM’s answer to this rhetorical question is ambivalent: while the largest US bank says that the current rally still has upside, it quietly advises its clients to start selling.

We stay in the Growth Trade as we believe that the steady upgrading of growth prospects and asset price moves is still benefiting from greater positive feedback loops and that the negative feedback from economic and financial overheating are both still too weak or too far off. At the same time, the speed of the rally is inducing us to start trimming slowly, through going neutral on HY.

Going back to the top chart, JPM then distinguishes between economic and financial overheating:

Economic overheating to us means that as companies start spending more, they eventually push up input prices – wages, resources – and the cost of borrowing, which all eat into profits and then future capital spending, making the economy vulnerable to the downside. The good news here is that so far, these negative feedback forces remain quite weak with even today’s US Jobs report showing no wage pressures. Corporate bond yields are down on the year, oil is flat and only industrial metals are up a lot, but that is too narrow to drive company costs.

Financial overheating, in contrast, is well advanced and feels so late 90s, that it merits monitoring a lot more closely for signs of bubble-trouble.

JPM then goes so far as suggesting that the asset bubble is closest to bursting in the US: “The country to focus on for signals of financial bubble risk is the US, because its expansion is much further advanced than that in other large countries, and because dollar assets make up half of all investable assets in the world.”

Here’s why JPM, along with everyone else, is worried the financial bubble is on the verge of bursting:

The signs of financial overheating in the US can be seen from elevated equity multiples, which for the S&P500 reached 24 on a trailing reported GAAP basis, the same as in 1997; new cycle lows on HG spreads and lower than the last cycle lows when adjusted for maturity and ratings changes; HY yields below 6%, which cannot be called high yield anymore; US Households with a higher share of equities in their financial assets than anytime except 1999-2000; and US household confidence back to the highs of the 90s, and their unemployment rate back to the lows then.

JPM eases client concerns, claiming that at least for now, the feedback loops of the bubble’s melt-up phases are self-reinforcing in a positive feedback loop:

The immediate impact of asset price inflation, and rising confidence and risk investing is to actually boost the positive growth shock that started it, reinforcing and providing positive feedback which in turn feeds risk asset prices further.

However, this benign initial state is unstable:

The reason we monitor financial overheating closely, despite its initial reinforcing impact, is that the last few cycles have shown that it leads to excesses that eventually make the markets and economy vulnerable to any setback, innocuous as the setback may be initially. The low vol and easy money environment of the current cycle, both at historic extremes, are a perfect breeding ground for financial excess. Simple leverage and low risk premia signals are to this analyst not the most worrying areas.

And then the best phrase perhaps ever penned by a JPM analyst, one who may have been watching Stranger Things a little too much in recent days: beware the shadow world.

It is instead the stuff we can’t see, hidden in the shadow world, outside the control of the regulators, as well as the economic and financial innovation that in the end leads to extremes.

Following these rather explicit warnings from JPM about the risk of “financial overheating”, the bank has some advice for clients on what they should do next:

What should investors do about the risk of financial overheating? There are in principle three options: i) full speed ahead with risk assets, but run fast away at the first sign of serious trouble; ii) start trimming and hedging risk asset positions; or iii) cut now and move to cash as the eventual correction will be ugly. We choose the middle road, and have started trimming, despite remaining net long the growth trade.

• The first approach – pedal-to-the-metal and then brake all you can when trouble is in sight – requires ultimate timing, is vulnerable to head-fakes, and is challenged by the fact that is analyst did not react fast enough in 2000 and 2007.
• The last option – to cut and run fast now – faces the risk that the market and economy may still only be in 1997, and could thus miss the doubling of the equity markets that was still coming.
• Hence, our preference to dollar average over the next year or so into a more neutral, and eventually defensive risk position. Some of that can be done by slowly building downside protection through 3-year out options, during
  periods of extreme volatility and good liquidity. Another way is to sell some of the longs in risk assets that do not always perform well late cycle and that are at their most extreme valuation now. For that we selected HY bonds. US HY yields fell this week to under 6%. From these levels, in the past the next 12-month returns were only just positive.

In conclusion: “The rolling fundamentals of earnings and default rates remain positive for HY, but these data are backward looking and do not tell us that much about the future. Our bullish view on growth and the rising odds of US tax reform keep us long and OW US risk assets, but the challenging value of HY make us prefer equity to credit longs. Go neutral on the HY asset class.”

Be that as it may, it is – as Loeys poetically puts it – all about the “shadow world” from this point on…

A leaker from FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation told NBC that there is enough evidence to charge President Trump’s former National Security advisor of 24 days, Mike Flynn, along with Flynn’s son, as part of the FBI’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Of note, the investigation into Flynn and Flynn Jr. has nothing to do with the recent indictment of lobbyist and short-lived Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, the Podesta Group, or Uranium One.

Flynn, a registered Democrat and Obama appointee to Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was reportedly pushed out of his role in 2014 over poor management skills, interpersonal conflicts, and a break from the Obama administration over how to deal with Islamic terrorism.

Over the next two years, Flynn and his son Michael G. Flynn ran the Flynn Intel Group Inc, which provided intel services for businesses and governments beginning in the fall of 2014. The Flynns consulted with various companies connected to Russia and Turkey, as well as domestic clients Palo Alto Networks, Francisco Partners and Adobe Systems. Flynn shuttered his firm in 2016 in advance of his role with the Trump administration.

Rundown of possible charges in the Mueller probe

According to NBC’s source, the FBI Special Counsel are looking into the following:

Flynn made $530K in 2016 for work which benefitted the government of Turkey. Flynn was hired to gather information about Turkish political enemy Fethullah Gulen, and elderly Muslim cleric living in the U.S. who Turkish President Erdogan blames for the 2016 attempted coup to overthrow him. Loretta Lynch’s Justice Department did not find enough evidence linking Gulen to the coup despite documents which Turkish officials say back up their claims.

While gathering intel against Gulen was completely legal, the FBI is investigating whether or not Flynn had a 2016 quid-pro-quo arrangement with Erdogan’s government to forcibly remove Gulen from the country if and when President Trump was elected.

The FBI is also reportedly looking into Flynn’s retroactive registration as a foreign lobbyist – which Flynn’s attorney says was not necessary since his client was a Turkish businessman and not a government official.

Flynn also made some $35,000 in 2015 for a speech at a Moscow gala event paid for by Russian state television network RT, where he was pictured sitting next to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Flynn was also a frequent guest on the network, appearing to discuss various issues.

Did Flynn launder money or lie to federal agents about his overseas contacts?

While Flynn’s gig with RT and the $35K gala dinner is more or less a nothingburger, and his retroactive registration as a foreign lobbyist may earn a slap on the wrist, Flynn’s potential quid-pro-quo in the Erdogan / Gulan matter may land him behind bars. If Flynn promised to extradite Gulan to face certain death in Turkey in exchange for over a half-million dollars, an indictment for the former Army Lt. General – and possibly his son, is a foregone conclusion.

An internet researcher has uncovered what appears to be proof that the FBI was investigating the Uranium One deal back in 2015 – months after the Peter Schweizer book Clinton Cash exposed the scheme, along with an article in the New York Times which laid out allegations of criminal malfeasance by the Clintons, their charitable foundation, and several associates.

Twitter user Katica (@GOPPollAnalyst) – who notably discovered Hillary Clinton’s IT guy ‘Stonetear’ asking Reddit users how to strip Clinton’s name from archived emails – discovered several Preservation and Records requests sent by an FBI special agent to various agencies involved in the approval of the Uranium One deal on August 28th, 2015, as first published by The Conservative Treehouse. Katica found the requests buried in an FBI file released via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Revealing Timeline

While the Clinton email investigation was launched in March of 2015 after it was revealed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a personal server and non-approved email accounts to conduct government business, reports from August, 2015 revealed that the FBI investigation was actually a criminal probe – though most assumed it was simply covering Clinton’s mishandling of classified information and not the content of her emails.

What Katica discovered is that weeks after the criminal probe began, the FBI sent notices to nearly every agency involved in the Uranium One approval process to preserve records.

This is huge… 

The agencies which received the request included the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Dept. of Treasury, the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI James Clapper), The National Counter Terrorism Center, and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

Five days after the initial request, the same FBI agent sent another round of notifications to the same agencies, adding the National Security Agency (NSA) and the U.S. Secret Service (USSS).

The next day, September 3rd, 2015, three more agencies were added to the preservation request: The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Department of Defense (DOD)

At this point, every single member of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) which signed off on the Uranium One deal was served with a notice to preserve records. 

As The Conservative Treehouse notes:

It would be intellectually dishonest not to see the very likely attachment of the special agent’s action.  That is to say an FBI probe originating as an outcome of information retrieved in parallel to the timing of the “criminal probe” of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email use.

The sequence of events highlights a criminal probe starting [early August 2015], followed by notifications to the “Uranium One” CFIUS participants [late August 2015].

If you consider the larger Clinton timeline; along with the FBI special agent requests from identified participants; and overlay the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as the leading entity surrounding the probe elements; and the fact that the CFIUS participants were the recipients of the retention requests;  well, it’s just too coincidental to think this is unrelated to the Uranium One deal and the more alarming implications.

FBI Mole 

Let’s not forget a bombshell report from The Hill two weeks ago which revealed that as early as 2009, the FBI – led by Robert Mueller at the time, had a mole in the Russian uranium industry, and that the agency had evidence that “Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow” – a deal which would grant the Kremlin control over 20 percent of America’s uranium supply. 

The mole was forced to sign an iron-clad non-disclosure agreement (NDA) which threatened criminal penalties for revealing information, even to Congress. After a request was made by Reps Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) calling for the Justice department to invalidate the NDA, the gag order was lifted, and the FBI informant was authorized to speak with congress.

BREAKING: DOJ authorizes FBI Informant to speak with Congress concerning alleged corruption involving Clintons & Uranium One. #MAGA #DTS

— Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) October 25, 2017

Tony Podesta and Uranium One

While one-time Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort turned himself in to the FBI a week ago on charges of money laundering, let’s not forget what a former Podesta Group executive interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller told Tucker Carlson Tonight: the FBI probe is now focusing on people in Washington who have worked as de-facto operatives on behalf of Russian government and business. To that end, he had quite a bit to say about his former boss Tony and his relationship to the Uranium One deal.

• In late 2013 or early 2014, Tony Podesta and a representative for the Clinton Foundation met to discuss how to help Uranium One – the Russian owned company that controls 20 percent of American Uranium Production – and whose board members gave over $100 million to the Clinton Foundation.
• In 2013, John Podesta recommended that Tony hire David Adams, Hillary Clinton’s chief adviser at the State Department, giving them a “direct liaison” between the group’s Russian clients and Hillary Clinton’s State Department.
• “Tony Podesta was basically part of the Clinton Foundation.”

As far as the current state of the FBI investigation, “They are more focused on facilitators of Russian influence in this country than they are on election collusion,” Carlson’s source told Fox.

Tying it together – previous reports of Federal investigations into the Clinton Foundation: 

Katica’s FOIA discovery corroborates a New York Times report from November 1, 2016, which asserts that an FBI investigation was kicked off based on revelations of pay-for-play in the book “Clinton Cash” written by Peter Schweizer:

The investigation, based in New York, had not developed much evidence and was based mostly on information that had surfaced in news stories and the book “Clinton Cash,” according to several law enforcement officials briefed on the case.

The book asserted that foreign entities gave money to former President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, and in return received favors from the State Department when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state. Mrs. Clinton has adamantly denied those claims. -NYT

The Wall St. Journal also reported last October that five FBI field offices were investigating the Clinton Foundation; New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Little Rock and  Miami, and “were collecting information about the Clinton Foundation to see if there was evidence of financial crimes or influence-peddling, according to people familiar with the matter.”

The FBI field office in New York had done the most work on the Clinton Foundation case and received help from the FBI field office in Little Rock, the people familiar with the matter said. –WSJ

And in November, as tweeted by Wikileaks and reported on by the Dallas Observer, the Clinton Foundation has been under investigation by the IRS since July of 2016, after 64 GOP members of Congress received letters urging them to push for an investigation. The investigation has been notably held at the Dallas IRS office – far away from Washington.

The Earle Cabell Federal Building in downtown Dallas is an all purpose office complex, a bastion of federal bureaucracy located at 1100 Commerce St. Most people come for a passport or to get business done in front of a federal judge. But inside, a quiet review is underway that has direct ties to the raging presidential election: The local branch of the IRS’ Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division is reviewing the tax status of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

So – while the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton was sold as a simple matter of mishandling of classified material, we now have proof that the FBI set their sights on the Uranium One scandal weeks after they began looking into Hillary Clinton’s emails. We also know that five FBI field offices and the IRS have been investigating the Clinton Foundation on accusations of pay-to-play and other criminal acts. 

Bets on who’s indicted next?

Flashback to October 27, 2016

Wallace Says HARD NEW PROOF Hillary Clinton Foundation/Bill & State Colluded 4PAY4PLAYS via Doug Band #PodestaEmails20 's #Thursdaythoughts pic.twitter.com/CxOpiKtW3w

— ?STOCK MONSTER? (@StockMonsterUSA) October 27, 2016