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Hackers Stole $2.3 Million From The Republican Party

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1 month ago

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The Republican party in Wisconsin has alleged that hackers have stolen $2.3 million from one of their accounts that was being used to help re-elect President Donald Trump in the key battleground state, the party’s chairman told The Associated Press.

The party told AP they had noticed the suspicious activity on Oct. 22nd and contacted the FBI on Friday, according to Republican Party Chairman Andrew Hitt, Associated Press reported.

 

Hitt said the FBI is investigating the theft of millions of dollars. FBI spokesman Leonard Peace did not immediately return a message seeking comment to AP.

The attack comes as less than two weeks remain before Election Day, as both Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden made their final push to win Wisconsin and its 10 electoral votes. In 2016, Trump won the state by fewer than 23,000 votes. Both Trump and Biden have planned to campaign in Wisconsin as the final days approach for the U.S. election. Polls have consistently shown a tight race in the state, with Biden ahead by single digits and within a margin of error.

Hitt further said he was not aware of any other state GOP being targeted by any similar hack, but state parties have previously been warned at the Republican National Convention this summer to be on the lookout for cyber attacks.

“We have been in contact with the state party and are assisting them through this process,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Ahrens. “The RNC never left Wisconsin after 2016, and we are confident that our ground game and the millions we are spending on TV and digital will deliver us another win there in 2020.”

Hitt said the hackers had manipulated invoices when they were paying four vendors. The vendors were being paid for by direct mail for Trump’s reelection efforts as well as for pro-Trump items such as hats to be handed out to supporters. The invoices and other documents were altered so when the party paid them for the services, the money went to the hackers instead of the vendors, Hitt said.

The hack was discovered after a party official noticed that an invoice was generated, Hitt said.

Hitt stated it seems the cyber-attack began as a phishing attempt and no other data was stolen or compromised, said party spokesman Alec Zimmerman.

Last week the U.S. Department Of Homeland security (DHS) blamed Iran hackers for spoofed voter intimidation emails that were blamed on The Proud Boys. U.S. govenrment analysts and private sector investigators were able to rapidly attribute to Iranian hackers a wave of thousands of threatening emails aimed at U.S. voters because of mistakes made in a video attached to some of the messages, Reuters previously reported.

This also comes after Donald Trump’s re-election campaign website was hacked briefly pushing a Monero cryptocurrency scam in which hackers claimed to have sensitive data on Trump proving various conspiracies, Anewspost previously reported.

The notice posted on the site in broken English claimed to have proof that the Trump government was involved in the origins of the pandemic, and that Trump has been involved with “foreign actors manipulating the 2020 elections.”

It provided two Monero wallet addresses for visitors to send money to, allowing them to effectively vote on whether the hackers should release the incriminating evidence. One wallet was labeled with “Yes, share the data” and the other “No, do not share the data.”

A note on the website referenced a “deadline” after which the amount of funds in the two addresses would be compared, but provides no information on when the deadline is. It also showed a PGP encryption key which TechCrunch notes corresponds to an email address at planet.gov, a website that doesn’t exist.

It is unknown who is behind the recent hack of $2.3 million dollars at the time of this report. However, investigators are said to be investigating the million dollar theft and Trump’s campaign website hack.

In June, Google’s security researchers stated they had identified efforts by at least two nation state-backed hackers against the Trump and Biden presidential campaigns.

Shane Huntley, director for Google’s Threat Analysis Group, said in a tweet that hackers backed by China and Iran had targeted the campaigns using malicious phishing emails. However, Huntley added, there are “no signs of compromise,” and that both campaigns were alerted to the attempts.

U.S. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said last week that both Russia and Iran have attempted to interfere with the 2020 election. Three sources told Reuters that U.S. intelligence is still determining who in Iran led the effort and the reason behind it, The Hill reported.

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Alex Baldridge is an activist and freelance journalist from the midwestern United States who was inspired to become a writer after watching the development of the Wikileaks story and the persecution of Julian Assange. Alex is especially interested in topics like surveillance, the rise of automation, foreign policy, prison reform, and the legal system.

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Elliot Page’s Wife Say’s Proud Of Star’s Transgender Disclosure

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10 hours ago

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December 2, 2020

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Yesterday, actor Elliot Page announced his transgender identity in a heartfelt Instagram post. Today, his wife, Emma Portner, has offered her public words of support.

Portner is a 26-year-old professional dancer and choreographer who began dating Page in 2017. The couple married a year later, in 2018.

 

Page makes regular appearances in Emma’s dancing YouTube channel and Instagram videos.

(Photo by Katrina Jordan/Sipa USA)

In a statement on Instagram, Portner said, “I am so proud of Elliot Page. Trans, queer and non-binary people are a gift to this world. I also ask for patience & privacy but that you join me in the fervent support of trans life every single day. Elliot’s existence is a gift in and of itself. Shine on sweet E. Love you so much.”

Netflix is currently updating Page’s name in all of the credits for the films he’s featured in, and he will continue to play the role of Vanya in The Umbrella Academy.

Portner created the choreography for Jim Steinman’s Bat Out of Hell The Musical. In 2015, she choreographed and starred in Justin Bieber’s music video for his song “Life is Worth Living”. She also created the choreography for Bieber’s Purpose World Tour.

In 2019, she was nominated for Arena Dance Competition’s “Best Female Dancer” of the year. Paper Magazine also listed Portner in “PAPER Predictions: 100 people to watch in 2019”. She is one of very few dancers to have been on the covers of the magazines Dance Spirit and Dance Magazine.

As of 2020, her work has been displayed in a variety of environments including Apple, Netflix, Vogue, Sony Studios, and in professional Ballet. She has movement directed Indie music stars such as Blood Orange, Maggie Rogers, and BANKS and performed at prestigious venues like The Guggenheim Museum, Jacob’s Pillow, the Oslo Opera House, and New York City Center.

Page first became known for his role in the film and series Pit Pony (1997–2000), for which he won a Young Artist Award, and for recurring roles in Trailer Park Boys (2002) and ReGenesis (2004).

Page also received recognition for his role in the film Hard Candy (2005) and won an Austin Film Critics Association’s Award.

(Photo by Lev Radin / Pacific Press/Sipa USA)

Page had his cinematic breakthrough with the title role in Jason Reitman’s film Juno (2007), earning nominations for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Critics’ Choice Awards, a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. He also earned praise for roles in The Tracey Fragments (2007), Whip It (2009), Super (2010), Inception (2010), and Tallulah (2016).

Page has also portrayed Kitty Pryde in two X-Men films (2006, 2014), produced the film Freeheld (2015) in which he also starred, and made his directorial debut with the documentary There’s Something in the Water (2019). Since 2019, he has portrayed Vanya Hargreeves in the Netflix series The Umbrella Academy.

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Woman Faked Deadly Cancer To Scam Friends Into Paying For “Dream Wedding”

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12 hours ago

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December 2, 2020

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A 29-year-old woman named Toni Standen faked a cancer diagnosis to scam her friends into contributing up to $11,000 for her dream wedding.

Standen went to great lengths to convince everyone that she was sick. She even shaved her head and gave newspaper interviews about her cancer diagnosis.

 

She had claimed that she only had a short time to live, and that the cancer had spread to her brain, bones, and all over her body.

Friends launched a GoFundMe page to give Standen and her partner James “a wedding they deserve.”

Photo: The Mirror

The wedding service was held at St Bede’s Catholic Church in Widnes and was followed by a reception for roughly 150 guests, according to The Mirror.

At the wedding, the couple received some video messages offering them support and congratulations.

One came from Standen’s father, who passed away before the wedding, and another came from Everton FC, and was delivered by one of the top players.

Photo: The Mirror

Her friends began to suspect that something might be wrong a short time later when Standen claimed to have the coronavirus.

After discovering the truth, her friends called the scam an “ultimate betrayal”.

Last week, Standen pleaded guilty to fraud by false representation. The crimes were alleged to have taken place between February 2019 and April 2020. However, she had been exploiting this scam for several years.

The first documented case of her fraud began in July 2017, when she was interviewed in her local paper saying she had cancer. Then later in March of last year, she gave another interview where she claimed that the cancer was terminal.

Photo: The Mirror

Even after the wedding, she continued to spread wild lies about herself. In January of this year, she made a post online saying that she only had two months to live and that her organs were beginning to fail.

Then a month later she claimed to have died.

Photo: The Mirror

In February, a post on her Facebook account read, “RIP TONI. Our lovely Toni passed away last night, surrounded by friends and family… strong until the end.”

Standen blamed the post on hackers, but her friends think that she just wanted to see what people would say about her if she died.

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Michael Flynn Calls On Trump To Impose Martial Law

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15 hours ago

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December 2, 2020

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Just a week after his presidential pardon, former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn promoted a call for the president to “temporarily suspend the Constitution” and impose martial law.

On Tuesday, Flynn shared a press release from a group called the “We the People Convention” that demanded for Trump to implement martial law. The statement even evoked Abraham Lincoln and the civil war.

 

“Then, as now, a President with courage and determination was needed to preserve the Union. Today, the current threat to our United States by the international and domestic socialist/communist left is much more serious than anything Lincoln or our nation has faced in its history – including the civil war,” the statement reads.

The statement condemns groups like Antifa, Black Lives Matter as well as the media. The statement also said that “limited” martial law is a “better option” than civil war.

The statement reads:

“When the legislators, courts and/or Congress fail to do their duty under the 12th Amendment, you must be ready Mr. President to immediately declare a limited form of Martial Law, and temporarily suspend the Constitution and civilian control of these federal elections, for the sole purpose of having the military oversee a national re-vote….You must also act, like Lincoln did, to silence the destructive media’s one-sided propaganda designed and proven to influence the election outcome, and end the unlawful censorship of Big Tech, to restore the confidence of the American People in our electoral process or we cannot continue as a nation. Failure to do so could result in massive violence and destruction on a level not seen since the Civil War. Limited Martial Law is clearly a better option than Civil War!”

Last week, Trump announced that he pardoned Michael Flynn.

The president announced the move in a Tweet.

In December 2017, Flynn formalized a deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller to plead guilty to a felony count of “willfully and knowingly” making false statements to the FBI, and agreed to cooperate with the Special Counsel’s investigation.

In January 2020, Flynn moved to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming government vindictiveness and breach of the plea agreement. The United States Department of Justice announced that it intended to drop all charges against Flynn on May 7, 2020.

Flynn, with his son Michael G. Flynn, ran the Flynn Intel Group Inc, which provided intelligence services for businesses and governments. The company was founded in the fall of 2014, and closed in 2016.

Flynn was paid more than $65,000 by companies connected to Russia in 2015, including $11,250 each from Volga-Dnepr Airlines and the U.S. subsidiary of Kaspersky Lab. Other clients included Palo Alto Networks, Francisco Partners, Brainwave Science and Adobe Systems.

While working as a consultant, Flynn served on the board of several organizations, including GreenZone Systems, Patriot Capital, Brainwave, Drone Aviation and OSY Technologies. Subsidiaries of the Flynn Intel Group included FIG Cyber Inc, headed by Timothy Newberry, and FIG Aviation.

In August 16, 2016, the FBI opened a case on Flynn as part of its Crossfire Hurricane investigation. The investigation was intended to find out if Flynn was knowingly or unknowingly “involved in activity on behalf of the Russian Federation which may constitute a federal crime or threat to the national security” of the United States.

A review of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, done by Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz, was completed in December 2019. It concluded that “the quantum of information articulated by the FBI to open” the individual investigation on Flynn “was sufficient to satisfy the low threshold established by the Justice Department and the FBI”. The review “did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the decisions to open” the investigation against Flynn.

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