CISA - The Censorship Organization?

Gripping Tucker interview with former State Department employee blasts election oversight group. Plus updates from Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota and around the US.

Source: Tucker Carlson on X

The interview that Tucker Carlson did with Putin was ‘ginormous’. But the next interview he did was with someone I had never heard of, and yet I think it is far more consequential.

Mike Benz worked for the State Department under Trump and in an interview with Carlson last Friday, Benz wove a story about how the nascent Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) came to play a critical role in censoring social media content. This is not really news as Benz has been saying this for at least a year, but the Carlson interview has caused it to go viral on Twitter/X and elsewhere.

Benz argues that the intelligence bureaucracy was caught off guard by the elections of Trump, Bolsonaro (Brazil), Modi (India), and other populist, non-establishment candidates due to the power of social media. This represented a threat to the established order and thus, curbing the influence of social media became paramount to restore that order. With Trump and the US, Benz argues that all of the intelligence operatives that had been part of developing and utilizing tools to impact foreign elections and that had been expecting career advancement with a Hillary Clinton presidency were suddenly derailed when Trump won. They then applied their craft domestically to see Trump removed in 2020, if not before.

Benz goes on to state that part of their efforts involved the creation and funding of fact checking operations, development of targeted artificial intelligence capabilities to mine for dissident social media, and the organization of these operations through private entities all to be coordinated by CISA. The public-private partnership has become the new MO because private entities are not subject to FOIA nor bound by first amendment restrictions.

Benz: CISA has compelled social media platforms to censure or ban persons making posts that are critical of government policy. These can be flagged as a cyber security attack on our nation’s critical infrastructure.

What evidence does Benz have to support his assertions? While his message is consistent across several interviews with him that I have watched, he does not seem to have any documents or smoking gun whistleblower testimony to back up his claims. However, his claims are not really new. The Twitter Files revealed much the same. The landmark Missouri v Biden case is supposed to be heard in March with the Supreme Court and CISA is named as a litigant precisely for their censorship efforts.

Additionally, I wrote last time about a FOIA request of documents that seemed to show CISA was involved in censoring criticisms of absentee voting in the run up to the 2020 election.

The Federalist reported on the work of Logically AI, a UK company which I have also written about and that has existing contracts in Washington and Oregon, which meshes with Benz’s assertions.

As part of my research, I try to get contrary opinions, so I did a search on Benz on Bing. I went through 8 pages and found just one contrary article from NBC News (linked to as well by the Daily Beast) alleging that Benz formerly posted anonymously on social media in ‘alt right’ groups about racist conspiracies. I saw nothing in the article (from October 2023) that addressed any of Benz’ assertions, just questions about his character. We will see what pops up in the next few days given the reach and impact of the Carlson interview.

For more information:

Mike Benz on Twitter

Foundation for Freedom Online website

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US: Study of Absentee Fraud in 2020 Shows Trump Likely Won - The Heartland Institute made the news a few months ago with the release of a poll stating that 1 in 5 absentee voters in 2020 admitted to fraud. In the wake of that poll, Heartland released a follow up study showing how that translates into a Trump win in 2020 but for the absentee vote fraud.

ND: Lawsuit to Prohibit Absentee Ballots After Election Day Dismissed - While many states allow this practice, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) brought suit in North Dakota to challenge its legality. The judge ruled the case did not have standing and was thus dismissed. A similar suit was also recently filed in Mississippi by Judicial Watch.

US: The Campaign Against ‘Election Denying’ Lawyers - It is actually larger than just elections as it includes attorneys for J6 defendants, Attorney Generals in a number of states, and even Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. This article provides an update on all of the lawfare efforts I first wrote about back in September. I wonder/hope that the end of all this, like mask and vaccine mandates, will be lawsuits that make whole the unwarranted victims and better controls established to prevent the perversion of our justice system in the future.

NJ: Atlantic City Pol Charged with Absentee Ballot Fraud - They were paying operatives $30-$50 to falsely signed off on delivering ballots to people who were to vote by mail, but instead delivered them to former Councilman Craig Callaway. The article states the Callaway had a reputation for being able to deliver mail-in votes.

NV: Unvoted Mail-In Ballots Counted in Presidential Primary - The Secretary of State put out a statement on Monday about a glitch that caused voter history records to erroneously update and show they had voted in the primary when they had not.

Note: The next few substacks will summarize election legislation in Idaho. There are several important bills coming but only a few have had print hearings to get bill numbers assigned. It will be moving fast over the next few weeks, however. To follow the bills, you can check out this link for a full list.