Harvard University's Belfer Center - which counts participation from a host of current and former Joe Biden advisers - has repeatedly hosted conferences alongside the Chinese Communist Party, frequently publishing papers peddling CCP narratives, all while refusing to disclose its source of funding.

Compromised Conferences

The National Pulse can reveal the center has hosted cybersecurity working groups alongside Chinese Communist Party government and military officials, despite China's repeated poaching and hacking of U.S. technology:

The working group in Cambridge brought together 20 representatives including former government and military officials, as well as tech, business, and academic professionals to discuss current issues in the bilateral cyber relationship.

Joe Biden's Communications team has repeatedly asked reporters to inform them of their questions ahead of pressroom briefings.

As reported by The Daily Beast, Biden's "staff have already on occasion probed reporters to see what questions they plan on asking new White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki when called upon during briefings" - less than two weeks into the former veep's term.

The "requests prompted concerns" among the White House press corps, causing several reporters to flag them on a White House Correspondents Association Zoom call on January 29th. The Daily Beast summarized:

"According to multiple sources, leaders at the meeting advised print reporters to push back against requests by the White House press team to learn of questions in advance, or simply to not respond to the Biden team's inquiries."

Other sources were quoted as slamming the requests as inhibiting the press from "doing its job" and operating "freely" in the Biden administration.

That foreboding black fence erected around the U.S. Capitol building has had an unintentional side effect: walling off the local government's ability to enact new laws.

Washington, D.C., city officials say dozens of new local laws have been bottlenecked because of the lockdown of the Capitol building after the violent Jan. 6 attack by supporters of former President Donald Trump. Under terms of the District's tortured relationship with the federal government, physical paper copies of all new laws must be hand-delivered separately to Senate and House leadership. They cannot be mailed or emailed.

"We are unable to get through the fences. We are trying to find a way to deliver the legislation," D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson said Monday. "Sooner or later, there's going to be a gate that opens."

The problem was resolved by Monday afternoon. Nyasha Smith, the secretary of the D.C. Council, told The Associated Press that her office met "off-campus" Monday with a House of Representatives staffer to deliver the documents for House leadership. Last Friday, they did the same with a member of Vice President Kamala Harris' staff; Harris, as vice president, presides over the Senate.

But D.C. officials say the episode shines a light on the larger issue: the fact that D.C. isn't a state and needs to run its local laws past Congress in the first place.

Trump legal team denies that the former president violated the oath of office

Former President Donald Trump's legal team on Tuesday filed its response to the House article of impeachment ahead of next week's trial, denying wrongdoing and calling for the Senate to acquit Trump of the charge.

The answer denies that Trump violated his oath of office while also saying that he was protected by the First Amendment in response to claims he incited an insurrection.

"It is denied that the 45th President of the United States ever engaged in a violation of his oath of office," the Trump legal team brief says. "To the contrary, at all times, Donald J. Trump fully and faithfully executed his duties as President of the United States, and at all times acted to the best of his ability to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, while never engaging in any high Crimes or Misdemeanors."

Just hours before Joe Biden was sworn in 12 days ago, Israel moved ahead with 100s of new illegal settlement units. That included opening construction bids on 1200 units in the "doomsday settlement" of Givat HaMatos, so-called because putting Jewish-colonist housing on this hill south of Jerusalem would forever separate Bethlehem and the West Bank from Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. So it would doom the "two-state solution," according to liberal Zionsts who fight the settlement project.

Benjamin Netanyahu went ahead with Givat HaMatos five hours before inauguration with "malice aforethought" and "antagonism" for Biden, Jerusalem expert Daniel Seidemann told the Israel Policy Forum last week.

"He chose the timing. He did it with malice aforethought," Seidemann said.

Netanyahu is wed to the Trump plan that allows Israel to annex much of the West Bank, Seidemann says, and so he sought to "stick it to a Democratic president," much as he had sought "altercations" with Barack Obama over settlements in 2010-2012 and with Veep Joe Biden in 2010, in Biden's case announcing new settlements as Biden arrived in Israel.

Pre-9/11 put options on companies hurt by attack indicates foreknowledge

Financial transactions in the days before the attack suggest that certain individuals used foreknowledge of the attack to reap huge profits.¹ The evidence of insider trading includes:

• Huge surges in purchases of put options on stocks of the two airlines used in the attack -- United Airlines and American Airlines
• Surges in purchases of put options on stocks of reinsurance companies expected to pay out billions to cover losses from the attack -- Munich Re and the AXA Group
• Surges in purchases of put options on stocks of financial services companies hurt by the attack -- Merrill Lynch & Co., and Morgan Stanley and Bank of America
• Huge surge in purchases of call options of stock of a weapons manufacturer expected to gain from the attack -- Raytheon
• Huge surges in purchases of 5-Year US Treasury Notes

In each case, the anomalous purchases translated into large profits as soon as the stock market opened a week after the attack: put options were used on stocks that would be hurt by the attack, and call options were used on stocks that would benefit.

The White House is conducting a review to determine whether former President Trump should continue receiving intelligence briefings now that he has left office.

Speaking at the White House press briefing on Monday, spokeswoman Jen Psaki said President Biden's national security team is looking into the matter.

"It's something that is under review," Psaki said.

Former presidents typically have access to intelligence briefings after leaving office.

Israel's energy minister said on Tuesday it would take Iran around six months to produce enough fissile material for a single nuclear weapon, a timeline almost twice as long as that anticipated by a senior member of the Biden administration.

Israel is wary of the Biden administration's intent to reenter the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal and has long opposed the agreement. Washington argues that the previous Trump administration's withdrawal from the deal backfired by prompting Iran to abandon caps on nuclear activities.

Speaking last month a day before he took office as U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken said that the so-called "breakout time" - in which Iran might ramp up enrichment of uranium to bomb-fuel purity - "has gone from beyond a year (under the deal) to about three or four months". He said he based his comments on information in public reporting.

President Joe Biden's administration on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to cancel upcoming oral arguments and delay further action in two pending appeals that were filed by his Republican predecessor Donald Trump over U.S.-Mexico border wall funding and the so-called "remain in Mexico" asylum policy.

The court is scheduled to hear arguments in the two cases on Feb. 22 and March 1, respectively.

The Biden administration has already announced plans to discontinue construction of the border wall and suspend the asylum program. That action potentially makes the cases moot.

I am going to refrain from saying too much about mine and Sidney Powell's relationship. For one thing, over time it became something like I was working for her, helping her get answers to questions. Then, if I recall correctly, she became my lawyer. Whichever it was, in time the relationship became something for which privilege surely applies. One cannot selectively waive privilege, and just share things one wants to share while claiming "privilege" on the others. I know that. But what I can say is that our relationship started with me walking in off the street as a volunteer with information, and so I can talk about that phase of the relationship, but in time it became formal enough I will not be able to say more.

Mayor Giuliani, however, never became my lawyer, and I will not be so constrained in my accounts, as my ultimate purpose (my only real purpose), is to deliver to the public as honest a rendering as I may construct of the events between November 3 and January 6. It seems like a historically worthy thing to do.

For my part, though they thought of me as an entrepreneur, I introduced myself to them as the proprietor of this website, Deepcapture.com. I pointed out that back in 2008 it had won numerous awards for its business investigative journalism, and had also been voted the best journalism regarding corruption within the United States. I may have done other things in life but in addition, I'm a journalist, and I have the rights any journalist has. This means I can investigate what I want to investigate, I don't have to reveal how I learn things, and if I feel like sharing some of my findings with lawyers like Sidney and Rudy, it is no different than the dozens of other times this website has investigated things and shared its findings with lawyers, or even with law enforcement.