Reuters: DOGE staffer ‘Big Balls’ provided tech support to cybercrime ring, records show

The best-known member of Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service team of technologists once provided support to a cybercrime gang that bragged about trafficking in stolen data and cyberstalking an FBI agent, according to digital records reviewed by Reuters.

Edward Coristine [aka “Big Balls”] is among the most visible members of the DOGE effort that has been given sweeping access to official networks as it attempts to radically downsize the U.S. government.

Beginning around 2022, while still in high school, Coristine ran a company called DiamondCDN that provided network services, according to corporate and digital records reviewed by Reuters and interviews with half a dozen former associates. Among its users was a website run by a ring of cybercriminals operating under the name “EGodly,” according to digital records preserved by the internet intelligence firm DomainTools and the online cybersecurity tool Any.Run.

DOGE staffer ‘Big Balls’ provided tech support to cybercrime ring, records show

Jewish Space Lasers

Good essay on one of King Donald’s top suck-ups in Congress.


“The truth is this: Marjorie Taylor Greene is incapable of facing reality. Not just politically — psychologically. The moment she’s confronted with a question that can’t be spun into a bumper sticker, she implodes. That’s what happened here. And it wasn’t a gaffe. It was a confession.

“This is a woman who built her career on lies and rage. Who blamed Jewish space lasers for wildfires. Who chased down a teenage school shooting survivor and berated him in public like a shrieking ghoul. Who called for a “national divorce” not as a metaphor, but as a middle finger to the Constitution she pretends to defend. Who floated the idea of executing her political enemies, then claimed it was a joke — as if the rot hadn’t already set in.

“She is not misunderstood. She is not controversial. She is deranged, and her presence in Congress is a national humiliation.”

https://www.facebook.com/FearAndLoathingCloserToTheEdge/posts/642872058382100

Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal

The administration has downplayed the importance of the text messages inadvertently sent to The Atlantic’s editor in chief.

So, about that Signal chat.

On Monday, shortly after we published a story about a massive Trump-administration security breach, a reporter asked the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, why he had shared plans about a forthcoming attack on Yemen on the Signal messaging app. He answered, “Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.”

At a Senate hearing yesterday, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, were both asked about the Signal chat, to which Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, was inadvertently invited by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz. “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group,” Gabbard told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Ratcliffe said much the same: “My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”

President Donald Trump, asked yesterday afternoon about the same matter, said, “It wasn’t classified information.”

So if it wasn’t classified, and if the Trump administration is going to openly insult them and call them liars …

The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions. There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared.

And here it is:


Source:

Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal

Mediaite: Trump Just Handed His Biggest Enemy in Media a Slam Dunk

LOL! After all that whining about Hillary Clinton’s email server!

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

President Donald Trump insisted that information leaked to Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg was not classified multiple times during a White House press availability Tuesday afternoon. But his defiant tone may have just backed his administration into a corner of litigious federal investigations, potentially giving one of his most prominent and influential critics a major win.

Pro-Trump media figures have since bent over backwards to try to defend the massive security breach, which could potentially involve crimes, given the law that Trump enacted during his first administration in response to Hillary Clinton’s email server controversy.

Trump Claims Signal Leak Not Classified Could Be Criminal

UK Daily Mail: Trump team sparks fury with ‘sickening’ choice of emojis while describing their war plans in leaked Signal chat

The use of emojis in a leaked Trump administration group chat discussing strikes on Houthi targets has sparked outrage, with accusations that officials made light of the sensitive topics being discussed.

Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine, revealed on Monday that Trump’s national security advisor Michael Waltz had – seemingly inadvertently – added him to a group chat called ‘Houthi PC small group’.

The chat appears to have served as a virtual war room for some of the President’s top team, including Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard and Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Goldberg said that Hegseth shared the war plan with the group at 11.44am eastern time on Saturday March 15, two hours before the bombs began dropping on Yemen.

As news broke of the strikes, the journalist checked the group chat where he found a flurry of emojis and congratulations flooding the text chain.

Waltz updated the group at 1.48pm, saying the operation had been an ‘amazing job’ before sending three emojis a few minutes later – a fist, an American flag, and fire.

Trump team sparks fury with ‘sickening’ choice of emojis while describing their war plans in leaked Signal chat | Daily Mail Online

New York Times: Inside Pete Hegseth’s Rocky First Months at the Pentagon

The disclosure of battle plans on a chat app created a new predicament for the defense secretary.

There’s nothing that can’t be cured by few stiff drinks:

Even before he disclosed secret battle plans for Yemen in a group chat, information that could have endangered American fighter pilots, it had been a rocky two months for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Mr. Hegseth, a former National Guard infantryman and Fox News weekend host, started his job at the Pentagon determined to out-Trump President Trump, Defense Department officials and aides said.

The president is skeptical about the value of NATO and European alliances, so the Pentagon under Mr. Hegseth considered plans in which the United States would give up its command role overseeing NATO troops. After Mr. Trump issued executive orders targeting transgender people, Mr. Hegseth ordered a ban on transgender troops.

Mr. Trump has embraced Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla. The Pentagon planned a sensitive briefing to give Mr. Musk a firsthand look at how the military would fight a war with China, a potentially valuable step for any businessman with interests there.

Inside Pete Hegseth’s Rocky First Months at the Pentagon – The New York Times

Bloomberg: Deportations Won’t ‘Cure’ Blue Cities. They’ll Get Worse.

Trump has repeatedly disparaged American urban centers as dystopian hellscapes. His solutions are likely to hurt more than help.

It’s no secret that President Donald Trump has beef with America’s cities, especially the ones run by Democrats. He has long falsely cast them as crime-ridden, chaotic and dystopian — and often blamed immigrants for every urban ill.

Sure, cities aren’t perfect. But pandemic-era rates of violent crime have been dropping and cities remain economic engines, creating roughly 90% of the country’s output. And as US birth rates fall, cities owe much of their population growth to immigrants.

Deportations Won’t ‘Cure’ Democrat-Led Cities. They’ll Get Worse. – Bloomberg

Daily Express: Donald Trump ‘touched’ after receiving ‘beautiful’ gift from Putin

We know where Krasnov’s loyalties lie:

The Kremlin verified on Monday that a portrait of Donald Trump, commissioned by Russian President Vladimir Putin, was gifted to the former U.S. president.

According to Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, the painting was presented to Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, in Moscow earlier this month. Peskov confirmed this in response to a journalist’s inquiry but chose not to elaborate further.

The existence of the gift first came to light in an interview between Witkoff and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson last week. During their conversation, Witkoff mentioned that Trump “was clearly touched” by the portrait, describing it as “beautiful.”

Donald Trump ‘touched’ after receiving ‘beautiful’ gift from Putin

Vacationing elsewhere, not in Trump’s Amerika

Europeans:

Some Europeans reconsider trips to US in protest against Trump

And Canadians:

Canadians Are Boycotting American Vacations – WSJ

Politico: Musk’s X suspends opposition accounts in Turkey amid civil unrest

Suspensions affect accounts spreading information about the widespread demonstrations.

Helping another wannabe dictator stay in power:

Elon Musk’s social media platform X has suspended several accounts belonging to opposition figures in Turkey amid widespread civil unrest in the country.

But hypocrits don’t need to apologize for a few petty inconsistencies:

Musk, a self-proclaimed protector of free speech, said he acquired X to restore free speech on the platform.

Musk’s X suspends opposition accounts in Turkey amid civil unrest – POLITICO