What happened

On Oct 28, 2026, the transparency collective DDoSecrets published “Icepick,” a set of work records on more than 41,000 DHS employees and contractors. The records include names, work emails and phones, offices, titles and internal permission groups. WIRED previewed the data and reported that some of those groups relate to undercover work, wiretaps and tools such as Palantir (WIRED; archive).

The source calls itself the “Department of Peace.” It says the records came from DHS’s Okta single sign-on system (DDoSecrets). CBP accounts for more than half of the records. Outlets disagree on how many are ICE: WIRED and NPR say about 10,000, while the BBC and the Guardian say about 6,600 (NPR; BBC; Guardian). DDoSecrets says the set is not a full directory and calls it “business-card” data, not home addresses.

Within a day, DHS said it was “aware of a potential breach.” Okta said it had no evidence its systems were compromised. Bluesky blocked links to the data as malicious. And the search site built by Swiss hacker and journalist maia arson crimew, icepi.cx, went offline Thursday morning after its registrar, CentralNic, put the domain on hold following a takedown push by ZeroFox, a contractor ICE authorized to seek content removals (TechCrunch; WIRED). It was back within hours under a new domain from a different registrar, still hosted by the Icelandic company FlokiNET, which refused ZeroFox’s request (CyberScoop; POLITICO Pro). The raw archive remains on DDoSecrets, which has also released the search site’s source code.

George News has not accessed, downloaded or searched the leaked data, and will not. This piece relies only on published reporting.

The same actor as March?

This is not the Department of Peace’s first DHS release. On March 1, 2026, DDoSecrets published records on 6,681 applicants to DHS’s Office of Industry Partnership, with a note citing the Minneapolis killings of Alex Pretti and Renée Good (DDoSecrets; TechCrunch).

The two releases share a name, a publisher and a voice. The March note is written in the first person singular (”I’m releasing this”) and is casual and pun-heavy. Both leaks are tied to a news event: the Minneapolis killings in March, and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s July 17 promise to keep “turning up the heat” in October (NPR; CyberScoop). Our read, with medium confidence, is that one author is behind both. No outlet or official has publicly identified that person, and we will not guess.

Open questions

1. Okta flaw, or stolen DHS credentials? Okta says: “Okta is secure, and we have no evidence our data or systems were compromised.” That statement is narrower than it sounds. It does not rule out a compromised DHS tenant, a phished administrator, stolen credentials or a weak integration, which is the point Computing makes. The hacker did not answer press questions about how they got in, and DHS has not said. Reuters reportedly could not corroborate the Okta claim either.

2. Why the ten-week gap? The records were last updated Aug 19, 2026 (WIRED). The release came Oct 28. No source explains what happened in between. Did DHS detect the access? Were the credentials revoked? Did anyone at DHS know this data was out for two months?

3. Who got it first? TechCrunch reports crimew shared the data with DDoSecrets; DDoSecrets says the group sent copies to both (TechCrunch). The chain of custody matters for any prosecution.

4. Can a takedown campaign contain this at all? CentralNic placed icepi.cx on serverHold, but the site reappeared on a new domain the same day, and DDoSecrets has published the archive, torrents and the site’s source code. FlokiNET refused ZeroFox, arguing the records are “work identities of government employees,” not private data. ZeroFox’s letter, cited by the Guardian, says the database “places more than 40,000 identifiable individuals at risk of harassment, stalking and physical harm,” and rests on two facts: the data was stolen and it identifies real people (Guardian; CyberScoop). Whack-a-mole with registrars is not containment. Who else got notices, under what legal theory, and is DHS pursuing anything beyond takedowns?

The national security risk

Most of these records are office directory entries. The danger is in the permission groups. A list showing which employees belong to undercover or surveillance-related groups can expose people whose safety depends on not being known, along with their ongoing cases and sources. Fox News reports it confirmed undercover ICE agents appear in the data (Fox News).

That risk is no longer theoretical. The Washington Post reported on Oct 30 that SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors violent extremists, found the leak fueling violent rhetoric online. An account tied to an anarchist movement in Colorado posted information about five DHS employees working in one city, and several accounts on Instagram, Threads and X called for killing officers and harming their families (Washington Post).

Security researchers also warn that a single sign-on export is a roadmap for phishing and impersonation. It tells an adversary who has access to what, and whom to target (Computing; Yaamlabs). Foreign intelligence services do not need to have stolen this themselves. They just need to download it.

Accountability, in both directions

There are two accountability stories here, and they should not cancel each other out.

The first is DHS’s. This is at least the second breach by the same actor in eight months, after a string of federal incidents including the FBIJobs.gov breach that the FBI blamed on a contractor’s missed patch (NBC News). Congress should ask DHS when it detected the intrusion, how access was obtained, whether affected employees, especially those in sensitive roles, have been notified and protected, and what changed after March.

The second is the publishers’. DDoSecrets frames the release as “replacing the regime’s anonymity with accountability.” Transparency about government power is legitimate. But identifying rank-and-file and undercover personnel is a different act from exposing policy, and it carries real risk to people. Federal law (18 U.S.C. 119) bars publishing covered officials’ personal information with intent to threaten or incite violence, and as FIRE’s Adam Steinbaugh notes to WIRED, intent is the test. Doxing bills are already pending in Congress (Rep. Pfluger).

What to watch

• A DHS or inspector general statement on the method of entry and the Aug 19 to Oct 28 gap

• Any DOJ charging documents naming the Department of Peace

• Whether Okta revises or expands its statement

• Congressional letters or hearings on DHS identity security

• Further takedown attempts against the new domain, FlokiNET or DDoSecrets, and whether DHS escalates beyond contractor notices

Sources

• WIRED, “Massive Leak Exposes 41,000 Homeland Security Workers, Including Undercover ICE Agents,” Oct 28, 2026: https://www.wired.com/story/massive-leak-exposes-41000-homeland-security-workers-including-undercover-ice-agents/ (archive: https://archive.ph/Erqhn)

• WIRED, Bluesky block: https://www.wired.com/story/bluesky-blocks-links-to-major-leak-of-dhs-data/

• DDoSecrets, Icepick: https://ddosecrets.org/article/icepick

• DDoSecrets, DHS Contracts (March): https://www.ddosecrets.org/article/ice-contracts

• NPR: https://www.npr.org/2026/10/28/nx-s1-6021497/dhs-hack-ice

• TechCrunch, Oct 28: https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/28/hacker-stole-personnel-data-about-thousands-of-homeland-security-employees-including-cbp-and-ice-agents/

• TechCrunch, Oct 29: https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/29/bluesky-blocks-links-to-leaked-dhs-employee-data-as-government-seeks-takedowns/

• TechCrunch, March: https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/02/hacktivists-claim-to-have-hacked-homeland-security-to-release-ice-contract-data/

• CyberScoop: https://cyberscoop.com/dhs-employee-data-leak-ddosecrets/

• BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq8jzkpjr28vo

• The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/28/homeland-security-data-leak

• Fox News: https://www.foxnews.com/us/dhs-investigates-massive-data-breach-exposing-40000-employees-including-ice-border-patrol-agents

• Computing: https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2026/security/hacktivists-leak-data-41000-homeland-security-workers

• Yaamlabs: https://yaamlabs.com/blog/dhs-okta-staff-directory-leak

• The Guardian, Oct 29 (ZeroFox letter): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/29/dhs-personnel-data-leak

• CyberScoop, Oct 29 (takedown and relaunch): https://cyberscoop.com/dhs-employee-breach-icepick-database-takedown/

• POLITICO Pro, Oct 29: https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2026/10/ice-dhs-leak-takedown-request-01140645

• BankInfoSecurity, Oct 29: https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/dhs-strikes-back-targeting-icepick-leaks-a-33249

• Washington Post, Oct 30 (SITE finding): https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2026/10/30/hack-homeland-security-workers-data-fuels-violent-rhetoric-online/

• NBC News: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/fbi-hack-jobs-website-contractor-failure-rcna601928

• Rep. Pfluger: https://pfluger.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2984

I’ve been travelling to New Zealand for years. It’s one of the last places on earth that still feels like a natural paradise. It’s clean, remote enough, and small enough that it could actually matter if everything elsewhere went sideways. If the worst happened, it’s a place that might still be able to feed itself and keep the lights on. That’s why I pay attention when things start going wrong with the systems that run the country.

Right now New Zealand votes on 7 November. Polls are tight. The latest 1News–Verian poll has National and Labour level on 28% each. Everyone’s talking about the cost of living and housing, which is fair. Almost nobody is talking about the fact that the same government pushing digital driver’s licences and a trial of passport-free travel across the Tasman spent the better part of last year sitting on clear warnings that one of the country’s main patient portals had a password problem.

That’s not a theory. It’s what the emails show. And now the official reviews say it too.

What the emails show

On 22 June 2025, a source using the handle FVEY25 sent a security report titled “Manage My Health App Data Concerns.” It was 3:15 PM in Washington and 7:15 AM on 23 June in New Zealand. The report went to Manage My Health (MMH) support and to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC). It was blind-copied to a personal Gmail address that our source says belongs to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. He never replied.

The report said patients’ email addresses and passwords were sitting in the open, indexed by an OSINT search engine and attached to MMH web addresses. It came with a 3-page incident report and a 52-page list. In the source’s words:

“These records have not come from a ‘phishing’ site, but from the authentic website in question. … immediate action is recommended to mitigate risks, including a forensic investigation, user notification, and enhanced security controls. This report is submitted within the 72-hour regulatory deadline under the Privacy Act 2020.”

MMH’s system answered within two minutes: “Your case number is CAS-2592268.” Eight hours later, the source resent the report to 40 separate Privacy Commissioner addresses. The OPC’s auto-reply warned that it “will not respond to emails not addressed to us or that we are only copied into.”

Seventeen days later, the OPC opened file PBN/4009. Its first question wasn’t about the passwords. It was about money: “My read of the submission is financial details aren’t/weren’t directly affected – is that correct please?” The source answered that it was “user email addresses, passwords (many could be used elsewhere) full names and other PII — all of which are just (if not more) disastrous as exposed financial records.”

Then basically nothing useful happened for months.

The source kept going. In August he wrote to Stuff’s tips desk: “as of 5:19pm ET this data concern is still a major concern.” On 2 October he copied 98 addresses at Newstalk ZB and wrote separately to Winston Peters. On 5 October he sent a spreadsheet he said showed a separate Health NZ misconfiguration exposing Auckland DHB staff logins, and copied the Privacy Commissioner’s officer. On 20 October the OPC replied that it was “assessing what you’ve told us, and whether any change is required to our compliance approach.”

In between, on 1 October 2025, we published it. Part 1 of our digital ID series told readers that a Manage My Health security problem had been reported to New Zealand officials on 22 June and had “yet to be publicly acknowledged.” That was three months before anyone in New Zealand officially “discovered” anything.

On 4 November the source asked MMH directly: “What are you guys doing to fix this?” The answer finally came on 5 November 2025, about four and a half months after case CAS-2592268 was opened. It didn’t come from the CEO or a security lead. It came from MMH’s Customer Care Manager:

“Following our analysis, we sent an email notification to the impacted users, instructing them to reset their Manage My Health passwords immediately. … We have enabled 2FA for all impacted users. … We have also submitted a Privacy Breach Notification Form through the Privacy Commissioner’s website.”

Only “the impacted users.” Everyone else stayed on a single password. The source’s reply was blunt: “So you did not inform ALL clients just the ones you think were affected? That is not good enough.”

He was right, and now the Privacy Commissioner agrees with him. More on that below.

The media fared no better. On 21 November, Stuff’s investigations desk wrote back: “I’ll get someone from the team to contact you.” Internally, someone forwarded it on as “Another possible story here.” Nobody called. On 13 January 2026, after the breach was front-page news, Stuff investigative reporter Isaac Davison put it plainly:

“Yes it’s unfortunate we didn’t take a look when you contacted us the first time.”

Then came December

On or around 21 December 2025, a hacker calling himself Kazu logged into Manage My Health with a real patient’s username and password. He then used a weakness in the portal to move from that one account into thousands of other patients’ files, over several days. On 29 December a sample went up on a dark-web leak site. On 30 December the data was advertised for sale. That evening, Health NZ, not MMH, spotted it and raised the alarm. Kazu demanded US$60,000. MMH obtained a High Court injunction on 5 January.

The files came from the “My Health Documents” section. They included hospital discharge summaries, specialist referrals, lab results and user-uploaded files. The hacker claimed 428,337 files and 108GB. The confirmed toll is 99,416 people, revised down from early estimates of around 126,000. Roughly 91 percent of them were Northland patients. Media reports based on the published samples described clinical notes, intimate images and scanned passports. These are the kinds of files that invite targeted extortion, not just general identity theft.

Only after the breach did the June warning surface. On 7 January, Deputy Privacy Commissioner Liz MacPherson confirmed to BusinessDesk that her office had received the anonymous email in June 2025. She said the OPC had advised MMH to “consider” applying extra protections across all accounts. On 9 January, MMH said it had “investigated and did not find any breach,” but had “out of an abundance of caution … forced password resets on the users concerned” and “reinforced that two factor authentication is available.”

That is not quite what MMH told our source in November. Back then it said it had required two-factor authentication for the affected users and had filed a privacy breach notification. MMH should explain the difference.

The same week, our source wrote to Health Minister Simeon Brown, copying MMH and the OPC. Brown replied on 9 January (NZ time):

“I am deeply concerned and disappointed by this breach of confidential patient information … That has clearly not happened in this case which is why I have ordered a review of what has happened and the response to it, and how any repeat can be avoided. The information you provided has been forwarded to relevant parties for consideration.”

We published Part 5, The ‘Manage My Health’ Cover-Up, that same day.

What the official reviews found

This is the part the campaigns would prefer you skip.

In May 2026, Privacy Commissioner Michael Webster released Phase 1 of his inquiry. It found that both MMH and Health NZ breached Rule 5 of the Health Information Privacy Code, the rule on keeping health information secure. Paragraph 211 of his report says this:

“At the time of the incident, MFA was not enforced for end-user accounts, despite this being noted as a risk both in MMH’s own privacy risk assessments and by the Northland project team. While 2FA or MFA capabilities were available, their use was optional … This was despite the fact that, prior to the incident, there had been indicators of potential valid user credential exposure (such as a reported incident in June 2025).”

That’s the regulator, in its own report, pointing to the June 2025 warning. Why did MMH keep MFA optional? According to the report, because of its “perception that patients did not like it.” Mandatory two-step verification arrived in January 2026, after 99,416 people had already had their documents taken.

The Ministry of Health’s review, informed by CyberCX and Bastion Security Group, went further. It called the breach “largely preventable” and made 26 recommendations. CyberCX found that the login Kazu used had been stolen by infostealer malware called Lumma Stealer. Its verdict: “This type of attack is neither technically sophisticated, nor particularly uncommon.”

And there was a second warning. On 17 November 2025, an independent security researcher’s report on flaws in MMH’s API reached the company via the Ministry of Health. That researcher is not our source, and had first flagged problems back in December 2022. CyberCX said the flaws had “enough similarities to the attack method … to have raised serious concerns with MMH and should have prompted rapid remediation.” It found “no evidence” they were fixed before Kazu walked in five weeks later.

So that’s three warnings: December 2022, June 2025 and November 2025.

In September 2026, Webster issued formal compliance notices to both organisations, his strongest tool. They set legally binding deadlines: Health NZ by 29 January 2027, MMH by 31 August 2027. The Northland concentration came from a project between the old Northland DHB, now Health NZ, and MMH. It started around 2019, was piloted in 2021, and was rolled out more widely between 2023 and 2025. That project funnelled public hospital records into a private portal. Near its end, Health NZ’s business owner “formally accepted the risk” of running without MFA.

A fair objection, and why it makes the case stronger

Some New Zealand commentators have argued that the June 2025 list proved nothing. They point out that the email and password pairs look like old, recycled breach data bolted onto MMH web addresses, and that the 3-page report reads like boilerplate. Fair enough. The list didn’t show that MMH’s servers had been hacked, and we’ve never needed it to.

What it showed was that MMH patients’ logins were out there, circulating. That is “credential exposure,” in the Privacy Commissioner’s words. It’s exactly the risk that mandatory multi-factor authentication exists to stop, and exactly how Kazu got in: one valid stolen password, no second factor, and then the run of the house. Whether the June list and the December login were the same hole or two symptoms of the same weak system, the practical result for patients was the same. Their information was taken. The timeline of warnings was downplayed. Trust was burned.

Now look at what else is moving over there

Legislation is already through for optional digital driver’s licences. The Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Act passed in May 2026. You scan your physical card, complete a facial check against the register, and receive a version stored on your phone. NZTA is pointing to the second half of 2027. The government wallet and NZ Verify are expanding so more credentials can live on the device.

On 1 October, Christopher Luxon himself announced National’s election policy for a trial of “paperless” travel to Australia before the 2028 T20 World Cup. Eligible citizens would pre-submit their passport details on a phone, then move through Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown airports using “a smartphone, their digital credentials and biometric technology.” Australia has to agree. Biosecurity stays. The physical passport still exists somewhere, but the pitch is smoother, phone-based movement.

These systems sound convenient until you remember what just happened with a health portal used by about 1.8 million people. Optional security features stayed optional. A warning that went to the company, the regulator, dozens of journalists and, by our source’s account, the Prime Minister’s own inbox produced no emergency action. When the system was eventually breached, patients found out late. The Ministry’s own reviewers described the notifications as “often confused, overly optimistic and inaccurate.” Health records are already sensitive. Layering biometric enrolment for licences and border functions on top of that same institutional culture is not a small step.

New Zealand as a test population

New Zealand has form as a test population for this kind of technology. EFTPOS arrived there early, piloted at Shell and other service stations in 1985, and Kiwis adopted it faster and more completely than most places. It worked. It also meant the problems showed up there first. Digital health has followed a similar path. Manage My Health became the default portal for most GP practices, with more than 680 health centres. A specific regional deal concentrated more sensitive public hospital documents into one private system. The same pattern is now being applied to identity and travel documents. Early and enthusiastic rollout in a small, connected country means the failures surface there first too.

I’ve spent enough time in the country, and enough time dealing with its institutions from the outside (including helping a friend of mine, Kim Dotcom, navigate the machinery of the New Zealand state), to know that competence and candour are not automatic. They have to be insisted on.

Why this matters on 7 November

Voters over there have three weeks left to decide whether any of this matters to them. Most of the campaign will be about groceries and rents. Fair enough. But the people who will be asked to put their face into a digital licence system, or to cross the Tasman on a phone credential, deserve a straight answer about the last time a major government-linked digital system was warned about credential problems, by a whistleblower, a researcher and its own risk assessments, and did very little for half a year.

Ask the candidates:

1. Why did a June 2025 warning, sent to MMH, the Privacy Commissioner and, by our source’s account, the Prime Minister’s personal inbox, produce only limited password resets instead of mandatory MFA, the fix the Commissioner later said was overdue?

2. Why did a second warning about MMH’s API, passed to the company by the Ministry of Health on 17 November 2025, go unfixed until after the theft?

3. What independent evidence exists that the failures the Privacy Commissioner identified, which a Ministry review called “largely preventable,” have actually been closed? Will the same standard apply to the digital licence and travel systems?

4. If biometrics are going to be used for licences and airport movement, who holds them, for how long, and who checks the people holding them?

5. Why should anyone believe the next digital system will be handled better when the last clear warning was effectively ignored for six months?

Northland patients already know what the gap between ambition and competence looks like. Everyone else is about to be offered the same systems with better marketing. The lost six months are not ancient history. They are the clearest recent evidence of how these institutions actually behave when something goes wrong. You can decide that doesn’t matter. You shouldn’t have to decide without being told.

New Zealand still has a chance to get this right. It would be a shame if it didn’t.

Our earlier reporting on this story:

- The Slippery Slope of Mandatory Digital IDs – Part 1: New Zealand (1 Oct 2025)

- Part 2: Australia · Part 3: Canada · Part 4: United Kingdom

- The Slippery Slope of Mandatory Digital IDs is Accelerating (8 Oct 2025)

- The ‘Manage My Health’ Cover-Up: Ignored Warnings, and the Erosion of Trust in Digital Health – Part 5 (9 Jan 2026)

Sources:

- OPC Phase 1 inquiry report (May 2026)

- OPC compliance notices (Sept 2026)

- CyberCX review for the Ministry of Health

- Ministry of Health review

- 1News, 27 May 2026

- BusinessDesk, 7 Jan 2026

- MMH statement, 9 Jan 2026

- 1News on National’s travel trial

- 1News–Verian poll

If you have tips on this or similar stories, reach us securely via our whistleblower portal.

~GEORGE and Team

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The Key

During President Trump’s first term, a small number of these keys were made for world leaders, dignitaries and visitors to the Oval Office. One was famously presented to Benjamin Netanyahu on September 16, 2020. But the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) had ordered enough keys for a two-term presidency. So when that first term ended, there were a few left over. In January 2021, that handful went to senior White House staff and a few special “friends.”

On President Trump’s last day in the Oval Office, one was earmarked for us.

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You can’t buy one. You can’t replace one. It was, without question, the most precious thing we owned.

Why we gave it away

In 2023, we gave it away.

On March 30, 2023, we announced it: one of you would become the new keeper of the Key. Every “coffee” you bought us was one chance in a supporter draw ending April 30, 2023. The winner would also get to choose a second item from our 45WH collection, including a watch bearing the presidential seal. (The original page is archived here, and the Telegram post is here.)

Those 45WH items were special too. As we wrote at the time, to our knowledge they “can only be publicly found at” 45 Wine and Whiskey Bar, inside Trump Tower. Our friend Karla runs the bar, and that April she was showing a reader, Jim, the display cabinet, wearing her GEORGE NEWS gear. I posted: “If you’re in NYC this month, stop by 45 Wine and Whiskey (Trump Tower) and tell, Karla we sent you.”

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In May 2023, one of our supporters became the new Keeper of the Key. Before it shipped, I posted:

“Last few moments with our KEY, before we pack it up, and ship it off to its NEW caretaker.”

And on June 4, 2023, I was able to tell you this:

“For now, I can say, that the ‘mission/project’, you helped us fund, was a complete success.”

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~GEORGE

Folks, on Wednesday we published Alex Spiro Wants to Go Into Business. Let’s Talk About His Business History. Alex Spiro, Elon Musk’s lawyer and still a Quinn Emanuel partner, has told The Tufts Daily he is “still exploring what he can do with his life and with his career outside of law.”

So we went back into the archive.

These emails come from the BHR whistleblower archive we’ve been reporting on since 2023, the trove that came out of BHR’s “263” email servers. Spiro’s name appears in more than 200 messages, most of them routine. Most of what follows has never been published.

Quotes are verbatim. Times are Eastern.

“Are we part of the distribution?”

On April 22, 2020, BHR managing director Jason Zhu sent the board a “Project Distribution Proposal.” It would pay shareholders 100% of the company’s preliminarily audited 2019 distributable profits. Total: RMB 25.79 million. Hunter Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires, was copied on the thread. Hunter’s Skaneateles LLC still held 10% of BHR, as we reported in Part II.

At 9:39am on April 28, Spiro forwarded it to Archer with one line:

“Are we part of the distribution? You need to integrate me a bit”

Archer replied at 10:23am:

“I am negotiating on our holdback now related to distribution so not the time. They are saying needs to wait for Henniges audit for ‘US investors’ by regulation. This is all return of capital (my investment) for the next $2mm so you are not included in this.”

Spiro, three minutes later:

“Understood. Still want to integrate.”

Read that again. Two months into his BHR directorship, he asked whether “we” were part of the payout.

To be fair, Archer told him plainly he wasn’t included. We found no payment, invoice or share transfer to Spiro anywhere in the archive. “Integrate” may just mean he wanted a bigger role.

On June 10, Archer sent Spiro a “document that requires your signature to close out latest asset sale.” At 1:01pm, Spiro’s Quinn Emanuel assistant sent it back: “Please see attached from Alex.” It was a BHR written board resolution approving the 2019 audit report and “the Explanation on the Profit Distribution Proposal.” Spiro’s signature sits above his name on the signature page.

So where did the Ulysses share go? The paperwork answers that.

BHR’s board approved the final figure on July 31, 2020: RMB 23 million, not 25.79 million. The line for the Archer-linked shareholder reads: “Ulysses Diversified, Inc. 10% 2,300,000.00.” An August 26 dividend worksheet then deducts RMB 879,304 from Ulysses’ share to repay a USD 108,000 advance from a Xin Wang, leaving RMB 1,190,696. On August 31, BHR’s notice to Ulysses described “partial dividends amount of USD 191,231.34 in the first payment.” BHR’s Heng-Yin Zhang later told Archer: “The wire was made on September 9, 2020.”

And who is Ulysses? A CPA memo dated April 27, 2020, found in Devon Archer’s inbox, says that “Krista Archer owns and controls 100% of the authorized and issued shares of Ulysses Diversified, Inc.”

George News flagged that stake back in August 2023, sharing Wendell Husebo’s exclusive that Krista Archer held a ten percent stake in BHR Partners. The documents now show how it was paid for, and where the money went.

The money behind that stake came through the same company. A copy of Ulysses’ 2018 tax return reviewed by George News lists a “BHR Partners” investment of $215,955 at the end of 2018, and none at the start of the year. That is exactly the sum of two 2018 wires discussed in the BHR archive: $108,000 on January 12 and $107,955 on March 2. When the Archers’ accountant asked about them in September 2019, Devon Archer replied:

“That is correct. Those are both investments in BHR. We borrowed the funds from the partnership to make the investment so there should be no income / revenue associated with those loans but for Chinese regulatory reasons the funds need to come from the Ulysses account.”

A year later he told the same accountant: “The majority of the investment was actually made in 2014.” Either way, the paper trail for the board seat’s money runs through the Archers’ company. None of it is tied to Spiro.

We found no document showing any payment, share or fee going to Spiro. On the paper we have, the money went to Ulysses, and Ulysses is Krista Archer’s. That fits Archer’s answer: “you are not included in this.”

So how did Spiro get the seat? Two months before the “distribution” email, on February 28, 2020, his assistant sent Archer a signed Shanghai company registration form, again “from Alex.” Under “change of directors,” the old list ends with “Robert Hunter Biden.” The new list is the same, except the last name is “Alexander Benjamin Spiro.” The director page says he was “Ulysses Diversified, Inc 委派,” appointed by Ulysses, and carries a handwritten signature.

That’s the innocent reading, and it’s an ordinary one. The Archers’ company had a board seat and filled it with a friend who happened to be a famous lawyer. But it was Hunter Biden’s seat on the government filing, and Spiro signed for it.

The exit is odder. In April 2023, BHR sent Archer a signing pack. In it was a Ulysses letter that “removes Mr. Alexander Benjamin Spiro as director” and appoints a George Guo, “effective as of the date hereof.” It is signed for “Dr. Krista Archer,” as “Authorized Person.” The date on it is “22. 12. 2021,” 16 months before it was sent for signature.

Backdating paperwork to match a decision already taken is common in corporate housekeeping, and the archive holds earlier draft removal letters from 2020. But it means that on paper, Spiro stayed a BHR director long after his November 2020 email saying he “never agreed for it to move forward.”

“Will he give u ur 50k back”

On March 10, 2020, at 10:30am, Archer emailed his wife, Dr. Krista Archer:

“Can you sign this. Appointing Spiro to Board of BHR.”

The attachment was “Ulysses’s Director Appointment Letter.” Ulysses Diversified, Inc. is the BHR shareholder we tied to the Archers in Part II.

At 11:01am she replied:

“If u appoint him will he give u ur 50k back ⁉️”

That’s the whole email. Nothing in the thread explains it. It could be a loan, an investment, a fee, or a joke. We don’t know, and we won’t guess. Spiro and Archer do.

“Tell me how I could be useful”

On June 10, 2020, Archer wrote to Spiro, BHR CEO Jonathan Li and Zhu: “Let’s set up a zoom call early next week to introduce Alex properly and to discuss current projects and objectives.”

At 11:16pm on June 18, BHR’s Heng-Yin Zhang followed up “as per our call earlier this week.” She sent BHR’s company profile and a pitch book for the COFCO-BHR Food & Beverage Buyout Fund. “This fund is co-sponsored with COFCO,” she wrote. The deck calls COFCO “the largest state-owned agribusiness enterprise.” Her ideas for collaboration began with “introducing US investors (LPs) who are interested in China’s food and agribusiness sectors.”

Spiro replied at 6:29am on June 23:

“A lot of the work I do is in the consumer good space and the alternative alcohol space (think pre-canned mixed drinks). There are an array of companies I invest in and have access to that would be a good fit and I know the more cutting edge incubating funds stateside. I think it’s best for you to tell me how I could be useful or how to integrate.”

Now hold that next to what Spiro wrote on November 2, 2020, replying to Archer’s October 30 email saying BHR had “explored the Advisory Board position”:

“Devon - thanks for confirming nothing moved forward (as I never agreed for it to move forward).”

That note is about an “Advisory Board position.” The June emails show a director being introduced “properly” to BHR’s CEO and asking how he could be useful. We found nothing showing the COFCO collaboration went anywhere.

Before the board: “Basketball is kazak and China”

The business talk started long before the board seat. In August 2018, as we noted in Part II, Archer introduced Spiro by email to Iskander Karim of Mubadala, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign investor, ahead of a Big 3 basketball night at Barclays Center. Also on the email was Nurlan Kussainov, writing from an Astana International Financial Centre (Kazakhstan) address.

On August 24 Spiro wrote: “We will send you the firm 3 pager and the swf.” At 6:40pm he introduced two more people:

“Guys - meet Gerry and Emeka. 2 agenda items. Basketball is kazak and China. And the sports club”

At 10:37pm a Quinn Emanuel marketing director sent Karim and Kussainov “the firm overview and the firm’s sovereign wealth fund practice description.”

Pitching a law firm to a sovereign fund is ordinary business. But look where it went. April 13, 2019, Spiro to Archer: “We need to turn these contacts into something big.” January 25, 2020, a month before his BHR director paperwork: “Can’t believe we have failed to find a project.”

On March 18, 2020, at 9:42pm, Spiro introduced Archer to Scott Packman: “Scott- talk to Devon when you have a chance about spac and teaming up on some stuff.” On April 26, with Spiro copied, Packman asked Archer: “Just wanted to check in and see if you have an ETA on Henniges materials.” Henniges is the Michigan auto-parts maker BHR acquired alongside AVIC Automotive, as we laid out in Part III. We don’t know what the materials were for, or whether any deal followed.

On the To: line of a boardroom fight

By July 2020, BHR’s shareholders were fighting over the 2019 audit and the dividend. Spiro was on the To: line.

On July 9, Zhu circulated management’s answers to a shareholder’s audit questions. Item 3: “A subsidiary of BHR paid financial advisory fee of CNY1.94 million to BHR Newanchor Investment Management Ltd (“BHR Newanchor”), which is owned and controlled by 13 employees.” BHR said it was incentive pay managers had cut from their own salaries, sent offshore as “consulting service fees” to “motivate employees and achieve certain tax optimization.”

On July 14, Vice Chairman Lu Changqi told the board, Spiro included, that management would all resign (“将全体辞职”) if the chairman didn’t sign the audit report that day. We found no reply from Spiro. Being copied is not wrongdoing. But directors get these emails because directors are responsible.

The questions

For Mr. Spiro:

1. On April 28, 2020, who was “we” in “Are we part of the distribution?” What did “integrate me” mean?

2. Did you ever receive money, equity or any other benefit from BHR, Ulysses Diversified, or Devon Archer?

3. You signed the February 2020 Shanghai filing that put your name where Hunter Biden’s had been. Did you know whose seat you were taking? When did you stop considering yourself a BHR director?

4. What was the “50k” Krista Archer asked about on March 10, 2020?

5. Did you introduce any US investors, LPs or brands to the COFCO-BHR fund?

6. In November 2020 you wrote that you “never agreed for it to move forward.” How does that square with returning signed director filings and board resolutions, and asking BHR in June 2020 “how I could be useful”?

7. What was the SPAC you wanted Scott Packman to discuss with Archer?

For Quinn Emanuel:

1. Did the firm clear Spiro’s BHR directorship through its conflicts process?

2. Did the August 2018 sovereign wealth fund pitch lead to any engagement?

For Mr. Archer:

1. What was “our holdback”?

2. Who lent Ulysses the funds for its 2018 BHR investment, and why did “Chinese regulatory reasons” require them to come from the Ulysses account?

3. What was the 50k, and was it ever paid back?

Mr. Spiro, Quinn Emanuel, Mr. Archer: our inbox is open —we’ve sent you requests for comment.

If you’re new here, read what we published on Wednesday, then Part I, Part II and Part III.

Stay tuned, folks. More to come.

~GEORGE and Team

Alex Spiro, the Quinn Emanuel partner who has represented Elon Musk, Jay-Z and Naomi Osaka, just told his old college paper that he is “still exploring what he can do with his life and with his career outside of law.” That’s from The Tufts Daily on October 8, 2026. In the same interview he said: “I think I know more about psychology than I do about law.”

Let’s be precise. Spiro has not announced his retirement. He’s still a partner at Quinn Emanuel, and just last month Law.com reported that he’s representing Joshua Kushner and Thrive Capital in discovery proceedings in New York tied to FIFA’s failed FIFA Forward Enterprise plan.

But this isn’t the first signal. It’s a pattern.

In July 2025 he sat down with Emily Chang on Bloomberg’s The Circuit, under the headline “A-List Litigator Alex Spiro Aims at ‘Bigger Business’ Than Law.” LawFuel summed it up a few days later: he’s bored, and he wants to get into something “bigger than the law.” LawFuel also noted that he sits on several boards and advises the investment firm Consello.

And this week his name is back in the press for a different reason. On September 3, 2026, Spiro put filmmaker Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions on formal legal notice over the documentary Musk, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The letter accused the film of falsely insinuating that Musk used Starlink to influence the 2024 election. The film opened in New York and Los Angeles on October 9 and expands nationwide on October 16. Same lawyer exploring life “outside of law” with Tufts, still swinging for Musk in the headlines.

So the man wants to go into business. Fine. He’s entitled to.

But if Alex Spiro is going to ask investors, partners and boards to trust him with something “bigger than the law,” then it’s fair to look at the last business board we know he sat on.

We’ve been here before. So let’s talk about it.

The seat Hunter left

As we first reported in Alexander Benjamin Spiro: Part I, leaked documents from a verified whistleblower show that Spiro took Hunter Biden’s seat on the board of Bohai Harvest RST (BHR) in February 2020. BHR is the Chinese private equity firm Hunter Biden and Devon Archer both had seats on. It renamed itself “BHR Partners (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd.” on May 31, 2023.

This was no favor to a friend, and it wasn’t on a whim. According to the emails we reviewed, Archer first put Spiro forward for a supervisor role at BHR back in September 2018. The first message between Archer‘s BHR email address and Spiro’s Quinn Emanuel address we found is dated November 16, 2017.

In Part II we laid out the paperwork:

• February 2020: BHR executive Heng-Yin Zhang emailed urgent paperwork for Spiro to sign so he could replace Hunter on the board. An assistant at Quinn Emanuel sent it back with Spiro’s signature and a full-color scan of his passport.

• April 2020: A written board resolution lists Alex Spiro as a director. Hunter‘s name is gone.

• July 2020: Another board resolution, signed by Spiro in his capacity as director.

• August–September 2020: Internal moves begin for Spiro to resign. In September, BHR receives an appointment letter stating he’s being removed as director.

He wasn’t a name on a letterhead, either. In our July 2024 BHR series, we published an August 3, 2020 email from BHR’s Managing Director, Jason Zhu, asking all the directors, Spiro included, to sign the FY2019 audit resolution in triplicate and courier the originals to the Beijing office. On August 31, 2020, Zhu sent the board the signed 61-page Ernst & Young audit report, and Spiro was on that email too. Weeks earlier, Spiro was copied on an email about penalties BHR owed Sinopec after an arbitration ruling.

And Spiro’s own words that October, in reply to Archer, as we reported in Part II:

“Devon - thanks for confirming nothing moved forward (as I never agreed for it to move forward). For the avoidance of any doubt, no one has or had my permission to use my name, likeness, etc for any purpose.”

Keep that quote in mind.

“Does not reflect the truth”

Here’s the part every future business partner should read twice.

On November 8, 2020, the day after the networks called the election, Zhang asked Archer whether Spiro “should be reappointed after the election as you previously suggested.” Archer replied: “We are going to hold off any decisions until the Inauguration as I was advised.”

On December 14, Zhang wrote that BHR was “aware of Alex Spiro’s concerns with reporters.” The next day Archer suggested having “a letter on hand for Alex in case needed that he can have on hand to share with any overly zealous reporters.” He even supplied the wording: BHR had only “explored the opportunity of Mr. Alex Spiro joining the Advisory Board.”

BHR CEO Jonathan Li signed it on December 15, 2020. Then Zhang wrote this to Archer:

“Please allow me to mention that the wording from your suggested statement does not reflect the truth, but we also understand that the truthfulness of the statement cannot be verified by the press.”

Read that again. BHR’s own executive, in writing, saying the official statement about Spiro “does not reflect the truth.”

A year later, in December 2021, Archer was still at it: “I just need Alex’s name off any searchable registries or databases.” In a December 29, 2022 email, Zhang said the holdup was the Bank of China, which hadn’t signed the document needed to take Spiro’s name off. A replacement was finally named in March 2023, in documents backdated to December 2021 and signed by Archer’s wife, Krista Archer.

“Spiro is gone”

Now go back to December 2022, when Spiro’s name was still sitting on BHR’s filing record.

As I showed in Part I, at 4:02am ET on December 8th, 2022, after analyzing leaked documents, we relayed a message to Elon Musk through a mutual friend: “You have a guy in your newly-private company, with undeclared conflicts of interest.” It went with an unredacted copy (redacted here on Substack) of Spiro’s passport. The screenshot in Part I shows the reply two minutes later: “Who is he? What is he?” Our answer: “Head of Twitter Legal. He’s in charge of Twitter right now.”

I didn’t name that mutual friend in Part I. I can now. It was Kim Dotcom, who was in touch with Elon at the time, and whom I sat with at his home in New Zealand just weeks ago.

A few more messages were exchanged. Then, on December 11th, 2022 at 3:49pm ET, the reply we had been hoping for arrived from Kim: “Spiro is gone.” It’s right there in the screenshot. Kim had just heard it from Elon. We wrote back: “Boom!!!” and “He did the right thing.”

Musk later said he had removed his personal lawyer from Twitter’s legal team because he was “unhappy with some of the decisions made by Mr. Spiro.” Those decisions were said to include Spiro’s call to keep ex-FBI general counsel James A. Baker on as Twitter’s deputy general counsel. That’s the public version. Mine, as I wrote in Part I, is that the decision to remove Spiro (or to make it look like he was removed) came after Elon was made aware of the facts.

Who he was in business with

Context matters when you’re judging someone’s business judgment.

As we laid out in Part III, BHR has ties to the Bank of China. Citing the Washington Examiner, we also noted its 2015 acquisition of Michigan-based Henniges Automotive alongside AVIC Automotive, a subsidiary of a state-owned Chinese military entity.

His partner in all this, Devon Archer, was convicted in 2018 over a tribal-bond fraud scheme worth more than $60 million. President Trump granted him clemency on March 25, 2025. And the emails themselves came out of what we’ve described as a controlled internal leak from BHR‘s Chinese “263” email servers, which kept copies of everything even after users deleted them from their devices. That’s almost half a million raw email files, handed to us and a few other publishers by a whistleblower.

To be fair, and we said this plainly in Part III: we have no concrete evidence of wrongdoing by Spiro. His board tenure, as we reported it, ran from February to September 2020. But the record is the record. As Zhang put it to Archer: “the filing record is the hard proof that he at least once served as a director.”

The story that disappeared

There’s one more piece of this history, and it’s one I’ve never fully told.

When the BHR whistleblower first came forward, they came to us, George News. We shared what we had, with Marco Polo, the 501(c)(3), and Marco Polo brought in Alex Diaz, a journalist at The Sun U.S.

On July 10, 2023, at 5:03pm ET, The Sun published Diaz‘s exclusive under the headline “Hunter Biden has ‘secret business ties’ to Twitter lawyer at center of legal battle against Meta’s rival app Threads.” It opened like this:

“HUNTER Biden has secret business links to the hotshot lawyer at the center of Twitter’s battle against Meta’s new social network Threads.”

The “hotshot lawyer” was Alex Spiro. The piece went on to say that Spiro, then 40, had sent a letter that Wednesday on Twitter’s behalf to Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, threatening legal action over the “copycat” app. It then laid out what the leaked documents “appear to show”: that Spiro took Hunter‘s seat on the BHR board in February 2020, the board resolutions, the letter signed by Jonathan Li, and Zhang’s line that the wording “does not reflect the truth.” We shared it on X the day it ran, along with some of the emails it mentioned.

Then The Sun’s editors took it down.

And fast. By the evening of July 11, barely a day after it ran, the page was gone. A Wayback Machine capture from 7:59pm ET that night shows The Sun’s “Sorry, page unavailable” page in its place, served with a 410 error.

Today, the original link (the-sun.com/news/8566820) returns an HTTP 410 error, the code a server uses when a page has been deliberately and permanently removed. But the internet remembers. An archived copy, captured on July 10, 2023, is still here (backup copy on the Wayback Machine). Read it and judge for yourself.

We know of no factual problem with that story, and no correction was ever published that we know of. The reporting was sound, and it lined up with the documents we’ve published since.

So why did it vanish? Nobody has told us. In our view, a seasoned journalist like Diaz doesn’t let a story like that go “on a whim.” We believe Spiro put the fear of God into him, and that’s why it was pulled. That’s our belief, based on what we saw happen at the time. We’d be glad to hear a different explanation.

We asked Spiro and Quinn Emanuel for comment on this story. Neither has responded.

The questions [we sent to Spiro]

Mr. Spiro, if you’re moving into business, investors will do their diligence. Here’s a head start:

1. Did you serve as a director of Bohai Harvest RST / BHR Partners from February to September 2020, as BHR‘s own filings and board resolutions show?

2. If, as you wrote in October 2020, you “never agreed” for it to move forward, why does your signature appear on BHR board resolutions in 2020?

3. Did you ever see or use the December 15, 2020 letter signed by Jonathan Li? Did you know BHR‘s own executive said it “does not reflect the truth”?

4. What exactly were the “concerns with reporters” BHR said you had in December 2020?

5. Were you paid, or did you hold any interest in BHR or a related entity, at any point?

6. Have you ever disclosed your BHR directorship to a client, a firm, a board or an investor you’ve worked with since?

7. Which boards do you sit on today, and will your next venture take any capital from China or from parties tied to BHR?

These are simple questions. Anyone who wants to build something “bigger than the law” should be able to answer them.

If you’re new here, start at the beginning: Part I, Part II, Part III, and the BHR document series (I, II, III). Then share this with anyone who might be thinking about doing business with him.

Stay tuned, folks. More to come.

~GEORGE and Team

October 12, 2026

George News, Editor

Fifteen years. That’s how long a man has lived under an indictment that has never gone to trial.

Earlier today Kim Dotcom released The Real Mega Conspiracy, a compilation of evidence and analysis on the United States prosecution of Megaupload. We ran the short version this morning. This is the long version.

If you’ve followed this series, you already know where I stand. In Part 4, I told you I had sat with Kim at his home when I was recently in New Zealand, a father of six still paying for a case that should have been dismissed before his children grew up. I still stand with Kim. I’ve read the dossier front to back, and I’ve checked it against the court record.

Kim is my friend, and this is advocacy. But advocacy that can’t survive a fact-check is noise, and the people who want Kim on a plane to Virginia would love to catch us exaggerating. So where the dossier is right, I’ll show you the receipts. Where it’s Kim’s opinion, I’ll say so. Where it gets a detail wrong, I’ll fix it in front of you.

That’s how you win a fair fight. The other side never offered Kim one.

The record doesn’t need embellishing. An unlawful spy operation, an unlawful export of seized data, a judge who stepped aside, and a U.S. Supreme Court that just raised the bar for the theory at the heart of the case. That’s more than enough.

What happened on January 20, 2012

On 20 January 2012, about 70 New Zealand police, including the armed Special Tactics Group, raided Kim’s home in Coatesville, north of Auckland, at the request of the United States. Kim was arrested. Property and bank accounts were frozen. Megaupload, then one of the biggest file-storage services on the planet, went dark overnight, and with it went the photos, school projects and business files of millions of people who had never infringed anything.

U.S. prosecutors allege racketeering, copyright infringement, money laundering and wire fraud. They claim more than US$500 million in losses to rights holders.

Nearly fifteen years later, those are still allegations. No American jury has heard a word of evidence.

Kim’s position hasn’t moved since day one:

“I say Megaupload was a storage service and that users, not the company nor I, were responsible for uploads.”

For fairness: the U.S. government says it’s more than that. Prosecutors have argued in Virginia filings that the defendants themselves infringed and knowingly encouraged others to do the same, and New Zealand’s courts pointed to Megaupload’s uploader rewards programme and business model. That’s their case. Hold onto it, because a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court just made it a lot harder to win.

The Supreme Court spoke. It was 9–0.

On March 25, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment.

(Correction to the dossier: one page of it puts this ruling in April 2026 and another says March. The correct date is March 25, 2026. The Court’s formal judgment issued on April 27, which may explain the confusion.)

The record labels had won a billion-dollar verdict against Cox, an internet provider, on the theory that Cox kept serving subscribers it knew were pirating music. The Supreme Court threw it out. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for seven justices. Justices Sotomayor and Jackson agreed with the result on different reasoning. Nobody dissented.

The line that matters most for Megaupload:

“Under our precedents, a company is not liable as a copyright infringer for merely providing a service to the general public with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights.”

The Court said contributory liability requires intent, shown one of two ways: the company actively induced the infringement, or it sold a service tailored to infringement. Knowing that some customers break the law isn’t enough. Failing to cut them off isn’t enough.

Now put that next to what Megaupload actually did. Its terms banned infringement, and it ran a public form for reporting illegal files. Kim puts the rest plainly:

“Megaupload was a storage service. Users, not the company and not I, were responsible for uploads. The US Supreme Court has now ruled unanimously that knowing about piracy and failing to cut off accounts is not enough. Liability requires intent. Megaupload banned infringement in its terms, made users accept those terms with every upload, kept a designated takedown agent, and gave more than 150 rights holders, including every major Hollywood studio, direct delete access to our servers.”

Careful is how we win, so here’s the caveat. Cox was a civil case about an internet provider, and it doesn’t automatically end a criminal indictment. Prosecutors will say Megaupload did more than Cox did. But if knowledge isn’t enough, they have to prove intent: that a company which handed Hollywood the delete key was secretly built to rob Hollywood. That’s a much harder sell in 2026 than it was in a 2012 press release.

Two words in New Zealand law: “without more”

This is where Cox becomes a New Zealand story.

Section 92B of New Zealand’s Copyright Act is a safe harbour. It says that an internet service provider, merely because a user uses its services to infringe copyright, “without more,” “must not be subject to any civil remedy or criminal sanction.” Criminal sanction. It’s right there in the statute.

In 2020, New Zealand’s Supreme Court accepted that Megaupload was an internet service provider. Then it held the safe harbour didn’t apply, because the alleged conduct went beyond simply providing the service. In the Court’s view there was “something more”: the rewards programme and the overall business model. That reasoning leaned on the American Grokster line of cases.

Two things jump out.

First, “without more” isn’t defined anywhere in the Act. It’s ordinary language the courts read in context. So it’s entirely reasonable that Megaupload’s operators believed they were protected in New Zealand. The law was written to protect exactly the kind of service they said they ran.

Second, the U.S. Supreme Court has now told us what the American case law actually requires: inducement, or a service tailored to infringement. Kim’s team argues it’s reasonable to revisit the New Zealand finding in light of Cox. I agree.

Here’s why it matters. Extradition requires “dual criminality”: the conduct has to be a crime in both countries. If the safe harbour applies, then on the pure copyright counts the conduct isn’t criminal in New Zealand, and the dual-criminality basis for sending Kim to America on those counts is seriously weakened.

The spy agency that broke the law

This part isn’t Kim’s opinion. The government admitted it.

New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), our signals intelligence agency and the Five Eyes partner of America’s NSA, intercepted Kim’s communications in the lead-up to the raid. That was illegal. As a resident, Kim was a protected person whom the GCSB had no lawful authority to spy on. Inspector-General Paul Neazor’s 2012 report found the bureau got the law wrong.

On 27 September 2012, then–Prime Minister John Key apologized publicly to Kim and to New Zealanders, blaming “basic errors.” Key has always said he knew nothing of the spying until that September. Kim calls that claim unbelievable, and to this day he hasn’t accepted it.

Then there are the warrants. In June 2012, High Court Justice Helen Winkelmann held the search warrants used in the raid invalid, as overly broad general warrants, and found that sending clones of the seized hard drives to the FBI in the United States was unlawful. The Court of Appeal later reversed her on the warrants, and in 2014 a Supreme Court majority upheld them. But the export of the cloned data to the FBI stayed unlawful, and so did the GCSB interception.

Read that again: the people building this case broke New Zealand law at least twice, on the record, and the case rolled on anyway.

And the GCSB’s habits didn’t stop there. In March 2024, Inspector-General Brendan Horsley reported that the GCSB had hosted a signals intelligence system controlled by a foreign partner agency, which could support foreign military operations, from 2013 until 2020, without ever telling its minister. The Inspector-General found the hosting fell within a broad 2012 authorisation and was technically lawful, but that it was “improper” to keep the minister in the dark. He also found the bureau’s own senior leadership had lost track of the system until it was rediscovered in 2020.

That report isn’t about Kim. It’s about the agency that spied on him. When a spy bureau runs a foreign system on its own soil for seven years and its minister doesn’t know, “basic errors” stops sounding like an accident and starts sounding like a culture.

The judges

This is where Kim’s opinions are strongest, so I’ll keep what’s on the record apart from what’s his view.

The expert who stepped aside. The original extradition judge was District Court Judge David Harvey, one of New Zealand’s leading authorities on internet and IT law, a man who had worked on court technology since about 1990. In July 2012, speaking at the NetHui conference about U.S. copyright rules, DVD region-coding and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, he said: “We have met the enemy and he is US.” It was a play on the old Pogo line. It wasn’t about Kim. But the headlines wrote themselves, and Harvey stepped off the case. Judge Nevin Dawson replaced him.

Kim’s take, in the dossier: “Judge David Harvey was right about the enemy. I bet he saw the indictment and couldn’t believe his eyes.”

The replacement. In April 2010, while Judge Dawson was serving as Vanuatu’s coroner, New Zealand officials flew him and his family home for their safety after threats over a report critical of local security forces. Then–Foreign Minister Murray McCully of the National Party confirmed the arrangement. Dawson was back at work in Port Vila within weeks. Kim believes that history left the judge conflicted: “Judge Nevin Dawson was conflicted in my opinion and should never have been the extradition Judge in the Megaupload case.” He also says Dawson required no government disclosure when an expert raised the possible use of a “Stingray” cell-site simulator around his home. That’s Kim’s account and opinion. Weigh it yourself.

The Disney question. In Virginia, the case sat for a decade with U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady. In May 2022 it was reassigned to Judge Anthony Trenga. The docket gave no reason. Kim’s account, reported at the time, is that his team complained after discovering O’Grady’s household held Disney stock, and Disney is both a plaintiff in the studios’ civil case and a named victim in the criminal one. Separately, the Wall Street Journal had reported in 2021 that O’Grady handled more than 60 cases involving companies listed on his financial disclosure forms. Federal judges aren’t supposed to sit on cases where they have a financial stake. Draw your own conclusions about the timing.

“A setup.” Both O’Grady and Trenga served on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret court that approves U.S. surveillance warrants. Trenga was its presiding judge from 2023 until this May. Kim argues that O’Grady was effectively chosen by the Justice Department because he was the duty judge when the case was filed, and in the dossier he says: “In my humble opinion this looks like a setup from the beginning.”

(Precision note: the dossier implies O’Grady was already a FISA judge when he got the case. Court records show his FISA term ran from August 2020 to July 2023, years after the 2012 indictment. Trenga’s ran from May 2020 to May 2026. The national-security link is real; the timing is later than the dossier suggests.)

Kim also writes that he has “no expectation of getting a fair trial” before his current judge. And he claims the Eastern District of Virginia jury pool, drawn from an area full of intelligence and defence workers, is stacked against defendants in cases the government cares about. Those are his claims. He hasn’t published evidence for the jury allegation, and I won’t present it as fact. But it’s no secret that the government brings its most important national-security and cyber cases in that district.

Hollywood had the access. The calendar is public.

None of what follows proves anyone ordered anything. It proves who was in the room.

• July 2011. White House visitor logs show Vice President Joe Biden met senior executives from Warner Bros., Paramount, Sony, Universal and Disney, along with MPAA chief Chris Dodd and Mike Ellis of the Motion Picture Association’s Asia-Pacific arm. The dossier dates this meeting to July 27, 2011 and describes the agenda as intellectual property enforcement and opening China to more U.S. films.

• December 9, 2011. Visitor logs show President Obama hosted Chris Dodd for a private lunch in the Oval Office, roughly two and a half hours long. That’s about six weeks before the raid. The logs don’t tell us what was discussed.

• January 19, 2012. The day before the raid, as the SOPA anti-piracy bill was collapsing, Dodd went on Fox News and warned politicians who count on Hollywood money that “this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them.”

• January 20, 2012. The raid.

• October 2012. At a private dinner in Los Angeles hosted by James Cameron and Jon Landau, during John Key’s trip to sell New Zealand as a film location, Dodd raised the Megaupload case with the Prime Minister. Key said it came up “in passing.” (Correction: the dossier dates this dinner to October 4. Contemporary New Zealand reports, filed across the date line, described it as “last night” in a story published on October 5, New Zealand time. So it may have been October 3 in Los Angeles. Either way, it happened, and Dodd raised it.)

Then there’s the prosecutor. Neil MacBride, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia who brought the Megaupload indictment, had been chief counsel to then-Senator Joe Biden on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and before becoming U.S. Attorney he was Vice President for Anti-Piracy and General Counsel at the Business Software Alliance, the software industry’s anti-piracy trade group. He later served as General Counsel of the U.S. Treasury under President Biden. Biden has denied any involvement in the Megaupload arrests.

Kim’s comment on MacBride’s résumé is five words long: “Do I need to say more?”

Dodd, for his part, served alongside Biden in the Senate for decades, and Biden has called him one of his best friends.

As I wrote in Part 4: Hollywood’s vendetta isn’t a vibe. It’s the origin story.

The sentencing gap that should shock anyone

Kim’s two co-defendants, Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk, took a deal in 2022. The U.S. dropped its extradition request against them, they pleaded guilty in New Zealand, and they agreed to be available to testify against Kim.

On 15 June 2023, the High Court in Auckland sentenced Ortmann to two years and seven months and van der Kolk to two years and six months. They were released on parole in July 2024 after serving about 13 months.

(Correction: the dossier and our earlier post said they “served 10 months.” Ten months was when they first became eligible for parole, according to Kim’s legal team in 2023. Parole Board records reported by the NZ Herald show they actually served about 13 months.)

Now compare that with what Kim faces. An expert report commissioned for the Justice Minister put the likely U.S. range at 30 to 150 years, with no parole in the federal system. Kim’s own estimate is that the equivalent case in New Zealand would carry around 12 years. He calculates the co-defendants’ deal at a “99.55% discount” on the charges they originally faced. That figure is his calculation, but the scale of the gap is real.

Same company. Same alleged conduct. Two men out on parole in New Zealand. One man facing what amounts to a life sentence on the other side of the world.

“Accountability and extradition are not the same thing,” Kim said today. “Any case against me should be tried in New Zealand, under New Zealand law.”

The Court of Appeal’s answer this July was that Kim’s position was different: he hadn’t offered to plead guilty, he was the alleged primary offender, and the U.S. never agreed to withdraw its request. New Zealand has no “forum bar,” no law saying an extradition must yield when the case could be tried here. Maybe that’s the law. It isn’t justice. Kim adds a point the headlines skipped: the co-defendants’ account casting him as “ringleader” made the news, but he says a recording exists of one of them saying the opposite, and he has never been given the material on how that account came about.

Where the case stands today

Here’s the honest status as of today, October 12, 2026:

1. 2020: New Zealand’s Supreme Court held Kim eligible for surrender on the U.S. charges.

2. 12 August 2024: Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith signed the surrender order.

3. 7 November 2024: Kim suffered a serious stroke. It affected his speech, memory and balance, and he spent long stretches in a wheelchair. He has worked hard on his recovery since.

4. 2025: The High Court dismissed his judicial review of the Minister’s decision.

5. 1 July 2026: The Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal, holding that the Minister made no error and that a 30-to-150-year range wouldn’t “shock the conscience” of informed New Zealanders. It also ordered costs with a 50% uplift, after his lawyers sought a last-minute adjournment. That application leaned partly on the Cox ruling and partly on new medical evidence, which was still before the Minister.

6. Now: Kim’s team said in July it would seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of New Zealand. As far as I can find, no leave decision has been made public. That’s the last door in New Zealand.

“What is the government hiding?”

The dossier keeps returning to one theme: Kim has never been allowed to see the whole file.

The information requests. Kim made dozens of requests under the Privacy Act for the information the government held about him. The Crown declared them “vexatious,” on the grounds that he wanted urgent answers for his extradition fight. In 2018, the Human Rights Review Tribunal found that the requests had been unlawfully transferred to the Attorney-General and awarded Kim NZ$90,000 in damages. The High Court reversed that later in 2018. In 2020, the Court of Appeal allowed Kim’s appeal on the key point, holding that urgency alone couldn’t justify how the requests were handled, and sent damages back for reconsideration. Kim says he never received the information he was entitled to. What he did get, he says, were police files about 80% redacted.

(Correction: the dossier says Kim “won in the High Court.” The records I found show the High Court actually ruled against him in 2018, and his wins came at the Tribunal and then the Court of Appeal. The broad point stands: the courts found the government handled his requests unlawfully.)

The Ellis email. I’ll be especially careful here, because this is the one the other side always reaches for. In 2014 an email surfaced, supposedly from Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara to the MPA’s Michael Ellis, claiming Key had privately backed the studios’ case against Kim: “VIP treatment and then a one-way ticket to Virginia.” (Correction: the dossier describes it as an email from Ellis to Warner Bros. Every report I found describes it the other way around.) Warner Bros. and the MPAA both called it fabricated. In 2017, New Zealand’s Serious Fraud Office said it was “satisfied that the email was a forgery.” Kim has said he believes it’s real but couldn’t use it at the 2014 Moment of Truth event because it lacked headers and was easy to discredit. I won’t present it as proof, and neither should you. What I will say is that a government with nothing to hide would have answered his information requests lawfully the first time.

In Kim’s words: “The question is: ‘What is the government hiding?’”

The John Key question, as Kim frames it

The dossier includes a section that reads like a thought experiment, and I’m going to treat it that way. Kim asks: if you were to write a conspiracy theory, how could John Key have benefited from the Megaupload case? The hypothetical answers are goodwill with Hollywood while New Zealand was courting film investment, a stronger Five Eyes relationship, a “tough on piracy” image, cover for expanding GCSB powers, and doors opened for a post-politics career.

To be crystal clear: that is Kim’s hypothetical and his opinion, not an established fact, and I’m not presenting it as one. There’s no public evidence that Key acted in the Megaupload case for personal gain.

The one public fact underneath it is this: since April 2019, Sir John Key has sat on the board of Palo Alto Networks, an American cybersecurity company that sells to U.S. government agencies, and like other directors he’s been paid largely in company stock. The dossier puts figures on that stock. I haven’t independently verified them, so I’m not repeating them. Readers can look up the company’s SEC filings and judge for themselves.

What this piece leaves out, and why

Kim’s dossier ranges well beyond Megaupload: U.S. foreign policy, Russia, COVID-19, WikiLeaks and a message to President Trump. Those are his views, and some are worth their own conversation. But they aren’t the case, and I won’t let anyone use them to change the subject. This piece is about one question: should a nearly fifteen-year-old indictment, built on a liability theory the U.S. Supreme Court just narrowed and tainted by admitted illegality, still be dragging a stroke survivor toward a Virginia courtroom?

What I’m asking you to do

This isn’t a fandom. It’s a due-process test.

1. Read the record, not the 2012 press release. Start with Cox v. Sony, the 2012 Neazor report on the GCSB, and the Court of Appeal’s July 2026 decision.

2. Share this beyond your usual circle. You don’t have to agree with Kim on anything else to agree that fifteen years without a trial is enough.

3. Put it in front of the people who can still stop it. In Wellington: the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice. In Washington: the Attorney General, the White House Counsel and the Office of the Pardon Attorney. A dismissal, a declination or a pardon would end this.

4. Tell New Zealand’s MPs that this case belongs in a New Zealand court, under New Zealand law, including the safe harbour Parliament wrote.

5. Pray for Kim if that’s your language. His body has already paid a price no court ever imposed.

Kim has said he’ll talk to anyone, anywhere. His words: “Anytime. Anywhere.” If you host a show or a podcast, take him up on it.

Kim Dotcom is a test of whether two democracies can admit that a prosecution born in a lobby, fed by unlawful surveillance, and undercut by America’s own highest court should end in an office, not a prison.

I sat with him. I’m still standing with him. I won’t look away.

If you value independent reporting that answers to readers and not sponsors, subscribe to George News. It’s free, and paid subscriptions keep us ad-free.

Join us on Telegram at t.me/georgenews and follow us on X at @georgenews. Share this piece. That’s how it gets past the people who’d rather you never read it.

Stay vigilant.

— George

Reported facts above are attributed to the court records, official reports and outlets listed in our sources. Statements identified as Kim Dotcom’s opinions or claims are his. The U.S. Department of Justice, Sir John Key and others named are welcome to respond, and we’ll publish any response.

After nearly 15 years of unresolved allegations, Dotcom presents evidence that the case should be tried in New Zealand and that recent U.S. Supreme Court precedent undermines the core theory of liability

AUCKLAND, New Zealand — October 12, 2026 — Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom today released a detailed compilation of legal, factual, and contextual analysis regarding the long-running United States prosecution of Megaupload and its principals. The material, assembled after extensive legal work and independent research, documents unlawful surveillance by New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), judicial conflicts of interest on both sides of the Tasman, close alignment between Hollywood interests and government action, and a recent unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision that strengthens the defense on secondary copyright liability.

The 2012 Raid and Unresolved Allegations

On 20 January 2012, approximately 70 New Zealand police officers, including members of the armed Special Tactics Group, raided Dotcom’s Coatesville residence at the request of the United States. Property and accounts were seized and Megaupload was shut down. U.S. prosecutors allege racketeering, copyright infringement, and money laundering, claiming US$500 million in losses to rights holders. After nearly 15 years, the case remains allegations without a conviction.

“Megaupload was a storage service. Users, not the company and not I, were responsible for uploads,” Dotcom stated. “The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in the Cox case unanimously in 2026 that mere knowledge of infringement and failure to terminate accounts is not enough for secondary liability. Liability requires intent—inducement or a service tailored to infringement. Megaupload had clear terms that prohibited copyright infringement, required users to confirm those terms with every upload, maintained a designated agent for takedown requests, and gave more than 150 copyright holders, including every major Hollywood studio, direct delete access to our servers.”

Unlawful Surveillance and Judicial Issues

GCSB Interception and Government Admissions

The GCSB intercepted Dotcom’s communications despite his protected residency status. The New Zealand government later admitted the surveillance was unlawful, and former Prime Minister John Key issued an apology while continuing to claim he knew nothing. A High Court judge initially held the search warrants invalid and the copying of seized data for the FBI unlawful. While a Supreme Court majority later upheld the warrants, the export of cloned data and the GCSB interception remained unlawful. A 2024 Inspector-General report found that the GCSB hosted a foreign signals system from 2013 to 2020 without informing its minister.

Questions Around the Judges

The original New Zealand extradition judge, David Harvey, an expert in internet and information-technology law, stepped down in July 2012 after remarking at a conference about U.S. copyright rules and the Trans-Pacific Partnership: “We have met the enemy and he is US.” He was replaced by Judge Nevin Dawson. In the United States, Judge Liam O’Grady, who owned Disney stock through his wife’s account, was reassigned from the case because Disney was an alleged victim. O’Grady had previously served as a National Security Judge on the FISA Court. His successor was also a National Security Judge.

Hollywood Alignment and New Zealand Incentives

White House Meetings and Industry Access

The analysis documents a July 27, 2011 White House meeting between then-Vice President Joe Biden and senior Hollywood executives focused on intellectual property enforcement and expanding U.S. film access in China. Attendees included Chris Dodd (then Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association), Barry Meyer (Warner Bros.), Brad Grey (Paramount), Ronald Meyer (Universal), and Rich Ross (Disney). Public records and reporting also show a December 9, 2011 Oval Office lunch between President Obama and Chris Dodd, roughly six weeks before the Megaupload raid. On October 4, 2012, Dodd raised the Dotcom/Megaupload matter with John Key at a private dinner in Los Angeles hosted by James Cameron and Jon Landau during Key’s visit promoting New Zealand as a film location.

The Prosecutor’s Background

Neil MacBride, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia who oversaw the Megaupload prosecution, previously served as Vice President for Anti-Piracy and General Counsel of the Business Software Alliance and as Chief Counsel to then-Senator Joe Biden on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Safe Harbour, Dual Criminality, and the Path Forward

New Zealand’s Safe Harbour Provision

Section 92B of the New Zealand Copyright Act provides a safe harbour from criminal liability for internet service providers when users infringe copyright “without more.” The New Zealand Supreme Court accepted that Megaupload was an internet service provider but held that the safe harbour did not apply because of alleged additional conduct. The phrase “without more” is not defined in the Act. Dotcom’s team notes that the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment raised the bar for secondary liability and that it is reasonable to revisit the New Zealand courts’ application of Grokster-style reasoning in light of that ruling. If the safe harbour applies, the dual-criminality basis for extradition on pure copyright counts would be significantly weakened.

Sentencing Disparities and Fairness Concerns

Co-defendants Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk, prosecuted in New Zealand, received sentences of under three years and served 10 months. Possible U.S. sentences range from 30 to 150 years. Dotcom has suffered a stroke and has lived under the cloud of unresolved allegations for nearly 15 years. He maintains that any case should be tried in New Zealand.

“Accountability and extradition are not the same thing,” Dotcom said. “Five Eyes data sharing, weak Bill of Rights supremacy, political appointment of judges, and a Privileges Committee drawn from the governing side leave New Zealanders without effective privacy and government accountability. A direct-democracy constitution would put the rights of New Zealanders above foreign requests.”

Additional Matters Covered

The full compilation also addresses an email from Motion Picture Association executive Michael Ellis stating that Prime Minister Key would extradite Dotcom; Dotcom’s subsequent Official Information Act request that was declared “vexatious” by the Attorney-General (a decision later overturned through multiple successful challenges); redacted police files; and other matters including John Key’s post-office director compensation at Palo Alto Networks.

Dotcom concluded with a direct message regarding the future of the case and related geopolitical issues, reiterating his willingness to appear on any platform to discuss the matter.

About Kim Dotcom

Kim Dotcom is a German-Finnish internet entrepreneur and the founder of Megaupload, one of the world’s largest file-hosting services before its 2012 shutdown. He has resided in New Zealand since 2010 and has been the subject of a protracted U.S. extradition request. He has consistently maintained that Megaupload operated as a lawful storage service with robust copyright compliance mechanisms and that the prosecution is driven by political and commercial interests rather than the rule of law.

Media Contact

Kim Dotcom
Available for interviews anytime, anywhere.
Further information available upon request.

October 9, 2026

One line in the New York Times scoop has gone unanswered all week.

James Blair and Chris LaCivita, per Ken Vogel at the Times, were “paid hundreds of thousands of dollars each through a Washington-based law firm that was retained by Republika Srpska’s government to provide counsel on voting issues.” The Times didn’t name the firm.

The next day the President wrote on Truth Social that he does “not have any idea who else they work for but will, on reflection, ask them.”

So we checked.

That’s what point nine of our thirteen-point thread of May 28, 2024 asked for: #FollowTheMoney. Twenty-eight months later, we went to the place foreign money is supposed to show up, the Justice Department’s Foreign Agents Registration Act database. Here’s what the documents show, what they don’t show, and the question that’s left.

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What the FARA Files Show

No registration. As of October 9, the FARA database shows neither Chris LaCivita nor James Blair registered as a foreign agent, or listed as an individual agent, for any foreign client. Neither man is listed as an agent for any of the more than a dozen firms that have registered for Republika Srpska since 2025.

One Washington law firm. The only Washington-based law firm on file for Srpska is Becker & Poliakoff, engaged as a subcontractor at $40,000 a month by another Srpska registrant, Zell & Associates. Its filing doesn’t mention either man.

The firm in the story says it isn’t one. Continental Strategy, the firm Semafor ties to the trip, signed a Srpska agreement dated February 11 and filed February 16, 2026. Its standard terms state: “The Firm is not a law firm, and this Agreement does not include legal services or create an attorney-client relationship. This Agreement does not include the services of any third party.”

The caveat. Filings lag. New agents have ten days to register, semiannual reports are due a month after each period closes, and for most of these firms the next round won’t come until early next year. Not finding a filing today proves nothing.

But it sharpens the question. If a Washington law firm paid two of the President’s top political advisers hundreds of thousands of dollars each to advise a foreign government on its election, which firm was it, and will its next filing say so?

The Money Trail at Continental

On Thursday, Semafor’s Shelby Talcott and Eleanor Mueller reported that Continental, which they describe as a Washington law and lobbying firm “with close ties to President Donald Trump’s network,” helped arrange the trip, citing three people familiar with it. (Its own contract, again, says it is “not a law firm.”) Per Semafor, the trip came after Alex Garcia, a former Trump campaign adviser now at Continental, “initially reached out to LaCivita.”

Continental pushes back. After publication, a firm spokesperson told Semafor: “It is wrong for Semafor to report Continental Strategy organized the Election Day trip.”

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Continental’s own filings aren’t in dispute. Its Srpska agreement sets a $35,000 monthly retainer to arrange meetings with “key stakeholders in the executive and legislative branches.” Its semiannual reports show a $28,750 wire on February 26, then six $35,000 wires from April through August, for $238,750 through August 31. The same report logs Srpska meetings with administration officials Walker Barrett, Jarrod Agen and Richard Walters. And per the Times, Garcia arranged a September meeting between Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Željka Cvijanović, who holds the Serb seat in Bosnia’s presidency for Dodik’s party.

That gives us two separate things. One firm is paid by Srpska to open doors in Washington, and per Semafor, it helped get LaCivita and Blair to Banja Luka. A law firm, still unnamed, paid them. We are not claiming those are the same firm, and Continental’s contract suggests they aren’t.

A Firm to Watch, and a Second Client

McGinnis Lochridge. The Austin-based law firm has represented Srpska since 2019. Its current agreement sets a $130,000 monthly retainer “inclusive of all payments to any independent members of our team.” Nothing in the filings or the reporting connects that firm to LaCivita or Blair, and we are not suggesting it paid them. It’s simply the kind of arrangement the next reports should spell out.

Albania. Per Semafor, LaCivita “has also advised another Continental client looking to ingratiate himself with Trump: Albania’s Sali Berisha.” Continental’s contract with Berisha’s Democratic Party of Albania, filed April 24, 2025, sets a $250,000 monthly retainer for a 24-month package. LaCivita is not named in it.

The bigger pot. Semafor reports that Srpska “has signed lobbying contracts worth at least $9 million since Trump was inaugurated.” Per the Times, citing DOJ records, operatives and lobbyists connected to Trump and his allies have been paid more than $4 million by Srpska since the start of 2025. Late last year, the administration lifted sanctions on Dodik.

Why the Timing Matters

Per the Times, the men spent part of last week in Srpska ahead of its October 4 elections. The Times describes the government there as having “aligned itself with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.” Blair runs MAGA Inc., which per the Times had $415 million in the bank at the end of August. LaCivita is its senior adviser. While they were abroad, the Times reports, the President “crisscrossed the country trying to help his party avoid a blowout.” A MAGA Inc. spokesman told the Times they “remained fully engaged.”

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The Circle

The Financial Times reported Thursday that Katie Wiles, Susie Wiles’ daughter, works at Continental.

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Fairness first. The firm told CBS News that her August trip to the region was for a different U.S. client’s feasibility study, and that she “has not spoken with any United States Government official regarding Srpska.” A White House official told CBS that “Susie does not discuss work matters with her daughters,” and that Garcia, not Katie Wiles, set up the Cvijanović meeting. She is not listed as a registered agent on Continental’s FARA filings, which fits the firm’s account.

We take that at face value. But look at how small the circle is. The 2024 campaign’s political director runs the President’s super PAC. Its senior adviser is the 2024 co-manager. A deputy political director from that campaign now lobbies for Srpska, at a firm where the chief of staff’s daughter is a partner. That firm’s filings also show it logged an August 21, 2025 phone call with “James Blair (WH Deputy Chief of Staff)” on behalf of a Dominican Republic trade client. Disclosed contacts like that are routine and legal. But when the President asks his team about a conflict, who in that room doesn’t know everyone else?

Two Statements, One Day

The full Truth Social post, from Wednesday at 12:02 p.m. ET:

“Chris LaCivita and James Blair are outside consultants. They do not work for me, other than as outside consultants. They most likely have numerous clients, but for that, you would have to ask them. They are allowed to do work for others, just like all consultants in Washington, D.C. I do not have any idea who else they work for but will, on reflection, ask them and, if there’s a conflict, I will terminate them, immediately! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/117400465758567373

Later that day in the Oval Office, per the Daily Beast: “They don’t have a conflict because they are independent people.” Semafor reports that Trump and Blair have since spoken, and one source called it “a good conversation.”

Which is it? You can’t rule out a conflict before you know who paid them. “Outside consultants” who run the President’s nine-figure midterm war chest aren’t outside of anything.

The Defense, and the Irony

Their side deserves a hearing. A source told Axios the 48 hours were “strategic advice on Election Integrity and what to look for to spot and avoid potential election fraud,” because Srpska was using new ballots and Smartmatic equipment for the first time. NRCC Chairman Richard Hudson called them “two of the most effective and loyal advisors President Trump has ever had” and said “This is a distraction, let’s get back to work.”

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Election integrity. Points one and two of our 2024 thread were the Charlie Spies hire as RNC chief counsel, and an election-integrity operation we said had been left without a leader. Now, by their own account, election integrity is a service they sell to a foreign government, in October, with the House on the line.

This Isn’t New

The LLC. The Daily Beast reported in 2024 on money flowing to LaCivita’s Advancing Strategies LLC, a figure later corrected to $19.2 million. He sued. The Eastern District of Virginia docket shows a joint notice of voluntary dismissal entered January 16, 2026. Per the Beast, he got no retraction, no apology and no damages.

The audit. In October 2024, the Guardian reported that Corey Lewandowski’s internal review “raised questions about roughly $80m of campaign money that went on television advertising actually went to commissions through a company co-managed by LaCivita.” The report also said Trump hadn’t seen it and it was unclear what Lewandowski found. Was it ever finished, and who has it?

Texas. Per Axios, LaCivita became senior adviser to the pro-Cornyn super PAC Texans for a Conservative Majority in 2025. Per the Texas Tribune, pro-Cornyn forces outspent Paxton’s side close to nine to one. Paxton won anyway. (Our takes: Vindicated, Nostradamus Was Right, Terminate Him.)

Same pattern every time: big money through consultant-controlled channels, and the funders never see the books.

What We’re Asking For

Steve Bannon told Politico Playbook: “We need a forensic audit of where the money went so the president has the information to hold people accountable.” We agree, and we’d add specifics.

Mr. President, you said you would ask. Ask in writing, and make the answers public:

1. The law firm. Name the Washington law firm that paid them for the Srpska work, how much each man received, and whether any FARA registration covers it. As of today, the public record shows none.

2. The client list. Every foreign government, party or politician either man has advised since January 2025, including Republika Srpska and Sali Berisha.

3. The audit. An independent forensic review of 2024 campaign and MAGA Inc. money paid to consultant-owned entities, starting with the Lewandowski questions.

The base funded this operation. The base is owed the receipts.

We said follow the money in 2024. We’ll keep following it until someone opens the books.

Reported facts above are attributed to the outlets and documents linked. FARA records were reviewed on October 9, 2026. Interpretations and questions are ours. LaCivita, Blair, MAGA Inc., Continental and the firms named are welcome to respond, and we’ll publish any response.

George News, Editor
October 7, 2026

We told you.

We told you on May 28, 2024, in a thirteen-point thread that cleared a million views, when Chris LaCivita was co-managing the re-election and installing the wrong people in the wrong jobs at the RNC. We told you again when he lawyered up with the firm that represented Hunter Biden and tried to strong-arm the Daily Beast over the millions flowing to his LLC. We told you in February 2026, when he took the Cornyn check and went to war on Ken Paxton. We told you in June, when that war collapsed and nearly $100 million in donor money went up in smoke.

And yesterday, October 6, 2026, the New York Times — Ken Vogel, no less, the reporter who has spent a career on foreign lobbying and the consultant class — published the story the movement has been living with for three years.

While President Trump was crisscrossing the country trying to save the House and the Senate, two of the men steering his midterm money machine were in the Balkans. James Blair and Chris LaCivita. Paid, each of them, hundreds of thousands of dollars through a Washington law firm retained by the government of Republika Srpska. Election advice. Voting issues. A pro-Russian government that has spent years courting this White House, aligned with Vladimir Putin, run by Milorad Dodik.

They flew home Monday. The Times published Tuesday. The President posted Wednesday.

Mr. President, you already wrote the ending. Finish it.

What the Paper of Record Just Reported

Vogel’s October 6 piece is not a blog rumor. It is sourced to people familiar with the travel and the payments. Blair and LaCivita, who are leading the big-money midterm advertising campaign for the Trump political operation, spent part of last week in Republika Srpska ahead of elections held there on Sunday. Each was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars through a Washington-based law firm retained by that government to provide counsel on voting issues. The sources said the work was for the government and not the nationalist party that controls it — and then noted that the two are essentially one and the same.

Under that party, Republika Srpska has aligned itself with Putin while spending heavily to court President Trump and his supporters. In the run-up to Sunday’s vote, the party warned that its hold on power could be threatened by the debut of voting machines — the same category of machine the President and his allies have blamed for 2020. The party won. In his victory speech, Dodik credited President Trump for the political environment that allowed it. Dodik had been under U.S. sanctions for years for undermining the Dayton Accords. Those sanctions were lifted last year after a costly influence campaign. Vogel is careful to note that Blair and LaCivita were not part of that sanctions push. They did not need to be. The pattern does not require them to have been in every room. It requires them to keep showing up where the check is.

A spokesman for MAGA Inc. told the Times the two remained engaged in the super PAC’s work even while they were overseas. Read that again. The men running the midterm air war did not pause the foreign contract. They stacked it.

On Wednesday, Vogel’s follow-up reported the President’s response. Blair, political director of the 2024 campaign, left a deputy chief of staff role at the White House in the spring to run MAGA Inc. LaCivita, co-manager of the 2024 victory, is a senior adviser to the same super PAC. They help lead it. They are guiding midterm strategy. Separately, they took the Balkan money.

The President wrote that they are “outside consultants.” That they “do not work for me, other than as outside consultants.” That they are “allowed to do work for others, just like all consultants in Washington, D.C.” And then the line that matters:

“I do not have any idea who else they work for but will, on reflection, ask them and, if there’s a conflict, I will terminate them, immediately!”

Mr. President, the conflict is not a hypothetical you need to go discover. It was printed in the New York Times while your party is trailing, with the election on November 3. Steve Bannon told Politico Playbook the quiet part out loud: Gavin Newsom is talking about ending this presidency in 28 days “while these two grifters are out of the country,” and then asked for “a forensic audit of where the money went so the president has the information to hold people accountable.”

We do not need Bannon’s permission to say it. We have been saying grifter since the spring of 2024. But when the man LaCivita’s network has spent a year trying to swiftboat is now using our word, and the paper of record is carrying the foreign receipt, the argument is over.

Terminate them. Immediately. Not after a reflection period. Not after the consultants explain why a Washington law firm and a Putin-aligned government were a fine side hustle in the last month of a midterm. Now.

The Mountaintop, May 28, 2024

Start here, because the Times did not discover Chris LaCivita. We did not discover him either. We documented him, in public, when doing so was unfashionable.

On May 28, 2024, at 4:10 p.m. Eastern, George News posted the thread. It cleared a million views. LaCivita blocked us the next day. Classic.

The thirteen points, condensed, because the original is still up and still accurate:

He hired vocal anti-Trumpers into key roles. Charlie Spies — election-fraud denier, Hillary-world adjacent, a man who had called the President a threat — installed as RNC chief counsel overseeing election integrity. Spies was fired. Not once. The spin was that he resigned. Our sources said the President fired him, repeatedly. LaCivita kept him as long as he could, then kept him on contract. The chief counsel chair sat empty. There was no real election-integrity program. We named the loyalists who should have had the job: Paul Dans, Stuart McCommas, Bill McGinley, Jesse Binnall.

He leaked a fake “bloodbath at the RNC” story to the Washington Post. A handful of people were moved. Anti-Trumpers were moved in. The press got a show.

He spent his time sniping at loyalists and feeding private conversations to the Post.

He staffed battleground election-integrity work with people in their twenties and skipped the 2016 veterans.

On Mitch McConnell’s Ruthless podcast he praised Never Trump architect Jon Lerner and former Pence chief of staff Marc Short — the same Marc Short who testified to the January 6 committee and whom the President had barred from the White House.

His long orbit included McConnell’s Josh Holmes and, at the time, RFK’s Doug Stafford.

Dominion’s lobbyist John Garst landed on a “Trump Team” delegate slate and on the campaign website.

More than $4 million in campaign money had already moved to his own companies, without the transparency a movement funded by small donors is owed.

The endorsements ran toward McConnell-aligned candidates. The client list included impeachment voters, Anthony Gonzalez among them. He had worked with Karl Rove for George P. Bush and trashed Ken Paxton. We said then that he was suspected of helping quarterback the Paxton impeachment.

And he was already putting out hit pieces on the few loyalists still in the circle.

We wrote it as a warning, not a eulogy. The campaign could still be saved if the consultant was replaced by someone whose business model was the victory, not the invoice. The Substack version went up June 29, 2024: We have a critical situation at the RNC.

He blocked us. The operation kept him. That was the tell.

The Lawyer, the LLC, and the Hunter Biden Firm

Victory did not make him modest. It made him litigious.

On October 15, 2024, the Daily Beast reported that LaCivita’s LLC had taken in $22 million off the re-election. By November 8 the figure had been amended to $19.2 million. On November 12, Geragos & Geragos — Mark Geragos, the lawyer America knows for representing Hunter Biden — sent the Beast’s general counsel a letter demanding a full retraction. The letter, from Setara Qassim on Geragos’s behalf, argued that the money went to Advancing Strategies LLC for advertisements, not to LaCivita personally, and cited FEC records of about $14.8 million for that purpose.

We published the letter on November 19, 2024: Chris LaCivita hires Hunter Biden Lawyer.

Our response then is our response now. Paying the LLC is not the same as not getting paid. A consultant who routes eight figures through his own entity, then hires a celebrity criminal-defense brand to police the adjective, is not a man losing sleep over the small donor in Ohio. He is a man protecting the float. The Beast’s correction did not answer the question that matters: who owns the LLC, who draws from it, and why the campaign’s most sensitive work keeps passing through a private cash register the principal controls.

That question is now a midterm question. MAGA Inc. had roughly $415 million in the bank at the end of August, by the reporting that followed. In September the Times described a $138 million advertising blitz — MAGA Inc., No Going Back PAC, Safety and Affordability PAC — carved across about fifty races, heaviest in Senate contests in Michigan, Ohio, and Alaska. This is the war chest. The men with their hands on it just demonstrated, in public, that a foreign government can rent their time in the final weeks.

If a Balkan entity can book them in October, who else is on the client list the President says he does not know?

The Heel Turn We Predicted: Cornyn, Graham, Paxton

After the win, Susie Wiles went to the White House as chief of staff. LaCivita did not take a West Wing office. He went back through the revolving door.

By 2025 he was senior adviser to Lindsey Graham’s re-election in South Carolina, and senior adviser to Texans for a Conservative Majority, the super PAC built to save John Cornyn from Ken Paxton. The same Ken Paxton we flagged in point twelve of the original thread. The same operative who had worked the George P. Bush race with Karl Rove was now the hired muscle against the attorney general who had sued the prior administration more than forty times.

We published the vindication piece on February 20, 2026: Vindicated: George News’ 2024 Exposé. Six days later we published the other half of the grudge: The REAL Feud: Chris LaCivita’s Attacks on Paul Dans.

Dans was the name we put forward in May 2024 to replace Spies. He was also the architect of Project 2025. When that binder became Democratic advertising, LaCivita put the screws to him and forced him out. Dans later called the campaign’s handling malpractice. He then did the unforgivable thing, by consultant standards: he ran against Graham. LaCivita, now on Graham’s payroll, called him a loser who had parachuted into South Carolina to run for dog catcher after trying to torpedo the 2024 campaign.

Our sources told us the campaign — not the President — came down on Dans like a ton of bricks because we had proved, with the receipts, that Spies was fired rather than gracefully resigned. Score-settling dressed up as loyalty. The North remembers. So does the FEC.

Then the Texas numbers arrived.

Cornyn’s side, with LaCivita advising the super PAC and the NRSC machine in its traditional incumbent-protection posture, spent at a historic clip. AdImpact tracking put the pro-Cornyn effort at $92 million and up; the primary’s total advertising approached or exceeded $128 million. One of the most expensive Senate primaries in American history. March 3, 2026: nobody to a majority. May 19: the President endorses Paxton. May 26: Paxton beats Cornyn, roughly 64–36.

We wrote it up on June 6: Nostradamus Was Right: Chris LaCivita’s $95 Million RINO Rescue Just Collapsed.

A four-term incumbent, in a state the President won by double digits, routed — after the consultant class spent like the lifeboat was on fire. The same NRSC world that once employed LaCivita as political director found real money for Cornyn and a fraction of that urgency, in the prior cycle, for a battleground MAGA nominee like Kari Lake. Protect the club. Starve the insurgent. Cash the check. Lose anyway.

That is not an ideologue who had a conversion. That is a professional whose model has always been access to whoever holds the checkbook. LegiStorm’s trail says the same thing in plainer language: Pat Roberts, Rand Paul, FP1 Strategies, the 2024 co-manager title, then PLUS Communications, then Cornyn, then Graham. No senior White House job. Straight back to the protection racket.

And now, four months after that humiliation, the same man is a senior adviser to the super PAC spending nine figures to hold Congress — and a paid adviser, in the same month, to a foreign government the Times describes as pro-Russian.

If Texas was the receipt on domestic grift, Republika Srpska is the receipt on foreign grift. Same man. Same month-of-decision instinct. Different flag on the invoice.

Why This Is a Midterm Story, Not a Balkans Story

Do not let anyone shrink this into a foreign-desk curiosity.

November 3 is twenty-seven days away. The President is barnstorming because the generic ballot and the special-election record have the conference staring at a blowout. Newsom is on television talking about ending the presidency in 28 days. MAGA Inc. and its allied vehicles are the financial counterweight — the $138 million already booked, the hundreds of millions still in the account, the Senate map in Michigan, Ohio, and Alaska, the House races that will decide whether the second term can govern or spend two years under subpoena.

The men steering that counterweight left the country to advise another government’s election.

Vogel’s sources said the counsel was on voting issues. Sit with that. The 2024 co-manager, whose RNC left the chief counsel job for election integrity vacant after Spies, whose operation we accused in real time of staffing battleground integrity work with novices, took a paid brief on voting systems and voting process for a government that was warning its own voters about machines. A MAGA Inc. spokesman said they stayed on the domestic account the whole time. So the midterm strategy was being run from Banja Luka, or from the plane, or from a hotel conference room where the other client was the priority that week.

Republican operatives told the press this was shocking. One called it a legitimately bad look while “we are fighting for our lives.” They are late. Shock is what you feel the first time. We are on the fifth.

There is a second problem, and it is the one the President’s post accidentally confessed.

“I do not have any idea who else they work for.”

That sentence cannot stand next to a nine-figure midterm budget. Outside counsel is a Washington euphemism. It is also a security problem, a message problem, and a base problem. The MAGA voter did not send twenty dollars so the senior adviser could invoice a Dayton-entity government on the side. The enthusiasm gap Bannon named is not a mystery. It is what happens when the base watches the consultant class get paid coming and going, then watches the President have to learn about it from the New York Times.

Blair’s role does not dilute LaCivita’s. It compounds it. Two of them. Same trip. Same law-firm conduit. Same super PAC. If the standard is conflict, it is already met. If the standard is “ask them,” they have had months — years, in LaCivita’s case — and the asking is being done by Ken Vogel instead of by the principal.

A Pattern, Not a One-Off

Lay the invoices in a line.

• 2024: Anti-Trump hires at the RNC. A fake bloodbath leak. Praise for Lerner and Short. Millions to his own companies. A block on the outlet that printed it.

• Late 2024: Geragos & Geragos, the Hunter Biden firm, deployed against a newsroom that counted the money.

• 2025: Graham’s campaign. Cornyn’s super PAC. War on Paxton. War on Dans.

• Spring 2026: Nearly $100 million burned. Paxton wins by almost thirty points after the President finally steps in.

• October 2026: Hundreds of thousands each, via a Washington law firm, from the government of Republika Srpska, during the midterm crunch, while still steering MAGA Inc.

No single item requires a conspiracy. The line requires a decision.

This is the decision. The future of the second term runs through November 3. A lost House is not a branding problem. It is subpoenas, frozen nominations, and a lame-duck clock started a year early. The consultant who treated 2024 as a revenue event, 2025 as a RINO protection contract, and October 2026 as a foreign side deal does not get to hold the map for the last month.

We are not asking the President to relitigate the primary. He won it, and the country ratified it. We are asking him to stop renting the aftermath to the man who tried to spend the base’s money against the base’s champion in Texas, and who has now been caught by the Times renting himself to a pro-Russian government while the midterms are on the table.

He has already threatened the termination. Threats are how consultants survive. Orders are how presidents govern.

What “No More Mistakes” Requires

Three things. None of them complicated.

First, terminate the engagement. Not a conversation. A termination. LaCivita off MAGA Inc., off the midterm strategy, off any quiet advisory that keeps his number in the war room. Blair with him, unless the President is prepared to explain why one of them was freelancing and the other was not. The post said “if there’s a conflict.” The conflict was the trip.

Second, the forensic audit Bannon asked for — and that we have been owed since the Advancing Strategies disclosures. Where did the 2024 millions land. Who owns the LLCs. What did Texans for a Conservative Majority pay, and for which ads. What did the Washington law firm pay for Republika Srpska, through which accounts, under what FARA or lobbying posture. The President said he will ask them who else they work for. Ask in writing. Publish the client list. The base funded this. The base gets the list.

Third, put the midterm money in loyal hands for the last twenty-seven days. Not NRSC alumni. Not the McConnell orbit that LaCivita praised on Ruthless. Not the shop that staffed election integrity with novices and then sold voting advice abroad. The President has the bench. He used it when he endorsed Paxton over the consultant’s client and the voters finished the job. Use it again.

We will keep the receipts. We kept them when we were alone. We will keep them now that the New York Times has picked up the baton.

Mainstream validation is not the point. It is the lag. Vogel did his job this week. We did ours in May 2024, and in November 2024, and in February 2026, and in June. The lag is how the swamp survives: by waiting to see whether the warning becomes a headline, and by cashing checks in the waiting.

The headline is here. The checks have been described, in the paper of record, as hundreds of thousands of dollars each. The election is November 3.

Mr. President, you wrote the sentence. If there’s a conflict, I will terminate them, immediately.

There is a conflict. Terminate them.

We screamed it from the mountaintops. For three years. The future of the country does not have another cycle to waste on a consultant who was never ours.

The truth doesn’t expire. It just keeps winning.

Share this. Send it to the people who still think the 2024 co-manager title is a loyalty medal. It was a contract.

Contracts end.

Prior George News reporting: the May 28, 2024 thread; We have a critical situation at the RNC (June 29, 2024); Chris LaCivita hires Hunter Biden Lawyer (November 19, 2024); Vindicated (February 20, 2026); The REAL Feud (February 26, 2026); Nostradamus Was Right (June 6, 2026).

This week’s mainstream record:

Kenneth P. Vogel, “Amid Midterm Crunch, Trump Advisers Took Time to Help Russia-Aligned Government,” New York Times, October 6, 2026; Vogel, “Before Midterms, Trump Distances Himself From His Political Advisers’ Work Overseas,” New York Times, October 7, 2026. President Trump’s Truth Social post, October 7, 2026. Steve Bannon to Politico Playbook, October 7, 2026.

Spending and result figures from our June 2026 analysis drew on AdImpact, FEC reporting, and contemporaneous coverage. Balkan payment figures are as reported by the Times: hundreds of thousands of dollars each, via a Washington law firm, from the government of Republika Srpska. This is opinion and analysis built on public reporting and our own prior work.

GEORGE NEWS is reader-supported investigative journalism. If accountability matters more than access, subscribe at georgenews.org or donate at georgenews.support.

~GEORGE

George News, Editor

Friday, September 25th, 2026

I hope this finds you well. I’m writing personally again to the people who have stood with George News from the beginning.

I had hoped July 4th — America’s 250th — would be the day I finally looked up, smiled at the camera, and met many of you in person. That did not happen. I know some of you were looking forward to it. I was too. I can’t go into the details yet. When I do show my face, you will understand why I waited.

What has not changed is the work, or how we pay for it. Since 2014 we have stayed ad-free and independent. George News is still funded by readers — coffee-sized gifts, the occasional larger one, shares, and the quiet loyalty of people who want journalism that doesn’t answer to a sponsor. That is still how we survive.

If you are in a position to help today, it goes straight into keeping the lights on and the reporting going. Donate securely here:

https://georgenews.support

Thank you for staying with us when the public moment had to wait. I have not forgotten the promise. I am still coming. The timing has to be right.

With gratitude,

~GEORGE~

We are told to never forget. That is the easy part. The harder part — the part official Washington has never wanted to sit with — is to look again at what was actually photographed at the Pentagon that morning, and to ask whether the pictures still support the account we were given.

This is not a piece about New York. It is not a piece about Shanksville. It is not a piece that pretends to name a plot. We said the same thing when we first put these frames in front of readers in March 2024: *without going onto the “who did it” of it all*. What follows is the visual record at the one target that was supposed to be the most defended building on Earth — and the questions that record still will not bury.

If you have not read our earlier collection of Pentagon footage and FBI interior stills, start here: [Revisiting 9/11]

What we were told

The official account is short, and it has not moved in a quarter century.

American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757-200 registered N644AA, left Washington Dulles at 8:20 a.m. bound for Los Angeles. Five hijackers took the aircraft. At 9:37:46 a.m. Eastern, traveling at approximately 530 miles per hour and a few feet off the grass, the jet struck the west face of the Pentagon — Wedge 1, the section that had just been renovated and reinforced. All 64 people on the aircraft were killed. One hundred twenty-five people inside the building were killed. A section of the outer ring came down about twenty minutes later.

That is the story. A 155-foot airliner with a 125-foot wingspan, full of jet fuel, disappeared into reinforced concrete at highway-overpass height, left a comparatively compact wound in the first photographs, punched a neat hole through to an interior service road, and left trees, a flagpole, and stretches of lawn looking as if a storm had missed them.

Look at the pictures. Then decide how comfortable you are with that sentence.

Image One — The fireball, before the façade came down

This is the frame we put in front of readers on March 25, 2024, quoting Alex Jones’s question — *where is the passenger jet?* — and adding our own:

> Imagine a hole roughly the size of the orange fireball you see here — taken before the collapse of that portion of the building. Light pole and tree seem unaffected from the “plane crash.” Now compare that orange glow to the “exit” hole in the last images.

Twenty-five years later the same photograph still does the same work.

What the frame actually shows, without commentary:

• A compact orange fireball at the base of the west wall, not a wing-shaped wound 125 feet across.

• A column of black smoke already boiling straight up the façade.

• A mature tree, still leafed, standing to the right of the fire.

• The flagpole standing.

• Arlington County rescue apparatus in the left foreground.

• Construction trailers and fencing from the renovation still on the lawn.

• Firefighters and civilians on the highway barrier, close enough to sit on the wall and watch.

• A maroon sedan in the near lane. Ordinary traffic geometry. No wreckage field of engines, landing gear, and fuselage sections in the roadway.

The official explanation for the small-looking wound is that this photograph is taken *before* the outer wall failed, and that the “real” entry hole was about 75 feet wide if you count destroyed first-floor columns rather than the fireball you can see. The American Society of Civil Engineers said as much in The Pentagon Building Performance Report (2003). They also said one wing struck the ground, the other was sheared by columns, and that what remained of the aircraft “flowed into the structure in a state closer to a liquid than a solid mass.”

That is an extraordinary physical claim. It may be true. It is also convenient. It asks the public to ignore the picture in front of them and trust a column-count performed after the façade had already come down.

Our question in 2024 was simpler, and it has not aged out:

If a Boeing 757 arrived on that lawn at 530 miles per hour, where, in this frame, is the path of a 125-foot wing?

The tree is still there. The pole is still there. The trailers are still there. The fireball is the size of a room, not the size of an airliner.

The aircraft we are asked to fit into that frame, a Boeing 757-200 is not a small object.

• Length: about 155 feet

• Wingspan: 124 feet, 10 inches

• Fuselage width: roughly 12 and a half feet

• Tail height: about 44 feet

• Typical fuel load on a transcontinental departure: measured in the tens of thousands of pounds

The official flight-path study from the NTSB puts the aircraft a few feet above the ground in the last third of a second, after a descending 330-degree right turn, engines near maximum, nose pitched down. Light poles on the approach are said to have been clipped. A 750-kilowatt generator on the construction site is said to have been struck by the right wing. The left engine is said to have hit a steam vault. Then the nose entered the west wall.

That sequence is tidy on paper. In the photograph above, the tidy sequence has to live in a strip of lawn and construction yard that still has a standing tree and a standing flagpole in the same field of view as the fire.

We are not required to pretend that is an easy fit.

The collapse that enlarged the wound

About twenty minutes after the strike — sources put the failure near 9:57 to 10:15 a.m. — a section of the E Ring above the impact came down. The hole the public remembers from the afternoon photographs is not the hole in the first photographs. It is the hole after the building did the work the aircraft, in the official story, did not finish in one piece.

On March 25, 2024, we put it this way:

> After the initial missile strike, they realized that the entry point was WAY too small for a jetliner. They decided to pull down a huge portion of the outer ring corridor.

Call it a missile. Call it a plane. Call it whatever the next document dump requires. The sequence in the photographs is not in dispute: first a compact fire at the base of the wall, then a much larger bite taken out of the façade. The official report says gravity and fire did that work, starting at an expansion joint, after columns on the first floor had already been destroyed.

The public was shown the larger wound. The public was told that was the airplane. The earlier frame — the one with the orange fireball and the standing tree — is the one that still has to be explained, not the one taken after the wall failed.

Image Two — The “exit” hole, and the orange paint

This is the other photograph that will not go away.

Official language has always been careful here. The Army and the ASCE did not say the fuselage came out the other side. They said an engine or the landing gear punched a hole of about twelve feet in the inner wall of Ring C, opening onto AE Drive, the interior service road that rings the building between C and B. The opening in this frame is tight, almost tidy, with a black soot bloom on the lintel and a debris field of office contents, insulation, and broken masonry on the wet floor.

Look at it the way a crime-scene photographer would look at it.

• The opening is not 155 feet long. It is not 125 feet wide. It is a punch.

• The wall around it is standing.

• The spray-paint tags — “MD” inside an inverted V — are the markings of the Military District of Washington / responder teams working the scene, not some occult signature. They are still part of the picture. They tell you this frame was processed as evidence.

• The debris on the floor is real. What is not obvious in the frame is a Boeing 757.

In 2024 we asked readers to put Image One next to this one: the orange fireball on the west face, and this punch-out on an interior ring. That comparison is the whole case for a second look. A large commercial aircraft is supposed to have connected those two points, through three rings of a fortified office building, and left this as the far-side souvenir.

The official answer is that most of the aircraft disintegrated into the first ring, and only a heavy component — gear or engine — continued. That is possible. It is also the sort of answer that should have been accompanied, in a country that claims to believe in evidence, by an unedited, high-resolution camera record of the half-second before impact. That record was never given to the public in a form that settles the question.

The cameras that should have ended the argument

The Pentagon is not a farmhouse. It is ringed with cameras.

What the public received were a handful of low-resolution security frames from a Pentagon parking-gate camera, released by the Department of Defense years after the fact, in which a blur streaks across a few frames and a fireball appears. Independent researchers have argued for two decades over whether those frames show a 757, a smaller object, or almost nothing that can be identified at all.

Citizens who stood on Route 27 and on the overpasses that morning described a large silver airliner. Other citizens described something they could not identify. A C-130 crew circling the area radioed that an aircraft had hit the building. Forensic teams later said they identified the remains of the people on Flight 77.

None of that is nothing. None of that is a substitute for the raw, unedited camera takes from every Pentagon-facing lens that was running at 9:37 a.m. Those takes were collected. They were not published as a set. Twenty-five years later, that is still the hole in the public record that no press conference has filled.

When the most fortified office building in the United States is struck in daylight, and the public is asked to accept a liquid-metal explanation for why the first photographs do not show an airliner-shaped wound, the cameras are not a courtesy. They are the case.

What the FBI Vault added — and what it did not

In 2017 the FBI’s FOIA library, The Vault, posted a set of Pentagon investigation stills that had sat out of circulation: overheads, exteriors, debris fields, emergency-response frames, and interior shots of agents working the scene. We published a run of that material in [Revisiting 9/11], in March 2024, alongside emergency-response video most readers had never been shown.

The Vault release was useful. It was not a substitute for the missing seconds of video. It showed fire, water, debris, and men in raid jackets standing in rooms that had been offices that morning. It showed the punch-out. It did not show a 757 at rest. It did not show a 757 in the last hundred yards. It showed the aftermath of whatever arrived.

That is the honest description of the file.

The questions that are still not crank questions

Twenty-five years is long enough for slogans to harden into liturgy. It is also long enough for a free people to demand that a photograph be allowed to mean what it shows.

These are the questions the pictures still ask. They do not require a theory of the crime. They require an answer in evidence.

1. Why does the first public photograph of the west face show a compact fireball rather than a 125-foot wound?** If the answer is “the wall fell in later,” say so every time the afternoon photographs are used as if they were the impact.

2. How did a 757 cross that lawn at a few feet of altitude and leave the tree and flagpole in Image One standing in the same frame as the fire?** If the flight path ran elsewhere on the grass, publish the surveyed path against this exact photograph.

3. Why was the far-side opening in Ring C the size of a truck bay, and why was it attributed to landing gear rather than a fuselage?

4. Where is the complete, time-stamped camera record from every Pentagon exterior lens running at 9:37 a.m.? Not five frames. The take.

5. Why did it take until 2017 for a basic FBI photo set to reach The Vault, and why are so many of those frames still the kind of image that raises more questions than it closes?

We can honor the dead — 184 at the Pentagon, thousands in New York, forty in a Pennsylvania field — without agreeing that curiosity about a photograph is a moral failure. The people who died in Wedge 1 are not protected by a blurry gate camera. They are protected by a record that can stand in daylight.

What we published in 2024, and why we are publishing it again

On March 25 and 26, 2024, we put these frames on X and on this desk.

The first post is here: [x.com/georgenews/status/1772351283552510209]

The follow-up piece, with the video record from the Pentagon grounds, is here: https://www.georgenews.org/p/revisiting-911

We said then that recent events had put 9/11 back in front of people who had been told the file was closed. Two more years have gone by. The file is the same. The photographs are the same. The official sentences are the same.

What has changed is the anniversary. Twenty-five years is the point at which a government that was confident in its account would have released the rest of the tape, because there would be nothing left to protect except the feelings of people who were wrong.

They have not released the rest of the tape.

So we will keep putting the pictures on the table. The orange fireball. The standing tree. The standing pole. The small punch-out with the orange paint. The collapse that arrived later and did the work the first frame did not show.

Readers can hold those images next to a Boeing 757. They do not need a laboratory to do it. They need permission to look.

Never forget — including the part they asked you not to look at

We will say the names when the memorials say the names. We will not pretend that a slogan is the same thing as a closed investigation.

September 11, 2001, at the Pentagon, is a morning that still has a photograph problem. Twenty-five years is long enough to admit that.

Look at the fireball. Look at the tree. Look at the pole. Look at the hole they called an exit. Then ask the only question that has ever mattered in this file:

If that is a 757, why does the first picture still look like this?

---

*GEORGE NEWS is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support this work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.*

Regards,

George

This is Part 4. The facts have moved. The moral case has not.

On July 1, 2026, New Zealand’s Court of Appeal dismissed Kim’s latest challenge to the Justice Minister’s surrender order. The last domestic door is leave to the Supreme Court of New Zealand. That is a narrow door. After that, the only people who can still stop this are political: Wellington, and Washington.

Two days before I published a short note on X asking you to remember him in your prayers, I sat with Kim at his home in New Zealand. I’m back visiting the country until October. This is no longer a file I read. It is a man I have looked in the eye after fourteen years of this.

Regardless of your party, your tribe, or what you think of file-sharing in 2012 — the unnecessary prosecution and torment of Kim Dotcom for almost fifteen years is government overreach fused to a Hollywood lobby vendetta. We can argue about everything else. We should be able to agree on this.

What just happened in the courts

The Court of Appeal did not retry whether Megaupload was a pirate ship. It asked whether the Minister of Justice erred in law or fact when he signed the surrender warrant. The panel said no. It rejected the argument that a likely U.S. guidelines range of 30 to 150 years “shocks the conscience” of informed New Zealanders. It rejected the claim that co-defendants who took deals in 2022 created a duty to charge Kim in New Zealand instead. It ordered costs.

That is the legal posture as of September 2026: eligibility for extradition was settled years ago; the Minister’s surrender decision has now survived High Court and Court of Appeal review; Supreme Court leave is the remaining Kiwi appeal.

None of that answers the American question.

The American question is whether this indictment should still exist.

The law still does not add up — and it never did

I will not re-litigate every footnote from Part 1. The white paper by Robert Amsterdam and Ira P. Rothken, The United States vs. You (and Kim Dotcom), remains the clearest map of the wreckage. The core points have not aged out:

Secondary copyright infringement is not a federal crime. The Copyright Act creates civil and criminal liability for direct infringement. It does not make a cloud locker a racketeer because users stored files. Dowling v. United States (1985) is still the Supreme Court’s warning: only Congress invents new crimes. Congress never wrote “aiding user uploads” as a felony.

DMCA safe harbor was not a slogan. Megaupload used it. They processed takedown notices. They even gave major studios direct access to pull infringing links. Viacom v. YouTube (2013) said generalized knowledge that some users infringe does not strip a service of safe harbor.

Substantial non-infringing use still matters. Sony Betamax (1984) protected a machine because people used it for more than theft. Megaupload stored family photos, schoolwork, business archives. U.S. government and military personnel used it.

Jurisdiction was always the quiet scandal. Foreign company. No U.S. offices. Most users and servers offshore. Morrison v. National Australia Bank (2010): U.S. statutes do not rule the earth unless Congress says so.

Process was dirty from the first warrant. Files the FBI asked them to preserve were later spun as ignored takedowns. Ex parte seizures. GCSB illegal spying. Invalid raid warrants. Prime Minister’s apology. Data taken out of New Zealand in breach of local law.

The Hollywood civil case against him was terminated on March 16, 2023. The criminal case is the one that will not die.

Hollywood’s vendetta is not a vibe. It is the origin story.

After SOPA collapsed in 2012, the MPAA needed a scalp. Megaupload had already been branded a “notorious market.” Chris Dodd — then MPAA chief, longtime Biden Senate ally — turned the heat up. Helicopters. Dogs. A global freeze. A press narrative written before the first hearing. The case landed in the Eastern District of Virginia under a U.S. Attorney who had been a Biden aide.

The white paper’s phrase is the right one: state capture. You do not have to love Megaupload to see the principle. If a lobby can turn a civil copyright fight into a 14-year transnational manhunt, every cloud locker on earth is next.

The human cost is no longer theoretical

November 2024: stroke. Speech impaired. Memory holes. Balance so wrecked he has described feeling drunk in a body that has never been drunk. Wheelchair through a long stretch of rehab. He has fought — lost a huge amount of weight, worked with nurses and coaches, posted through the fog.

I have now sat with him more than once. The first visit was the larger-than-life innovator with a laugh that filled the room. This week’s visit was a father of six who is still funny, still sharp in flashes, and visibly paying for a case that should have been dismissed before his children finished growing up.

Fourteen years of this is the punishment. The trial would only be the second act.

Why this is urgent now

Three clocks are running.

Wellington. Supreme Court leave is discretionary. If it is refused, surrender mechanics start moving.

The body. Stroke recovery is not a straight line. A Virginia detention center is not a rehab ward.

Washington. This is an Obama-era trophy that survived Biden and now sits on a Trump DOJ desk. Declining to pursue, moving to dismiss, or recommending against extradition is not “soft on copyright.” It is a decision that the United States will not use felony statutes as a trade association’s enforcement arm.

A pardon, a declination, or a simple finding that this 2012 indictment is no longer in the interests of justice would end a saga that has already outlived the website, the civil case, and the health of the defendant.

Who he actually is

The 2012 press package was “pirate in a mansion.” The record is an entrepreneur who built a locker millions used for ordinary storage, who patented two-factor authentication and open-sourced it, and who has spent the back half of his adult life as a defendant instead of a builder.

You can dislike the old business model. That does not get you to: invalid warrants, a frozen family, ignored DMCA compliance, extraterritorial criminal law, and a stroke patient being told to board a plane toward a 30-to-150-year guidelines range.

That is not law and order. That is an example being made.

What I am asking you to do

This is not a fandom. It is a due-process test.

1. Read the record — Part 1 and Part 2 — not the 2012 press release.

2. Share this past your usual tribe. The argument does not require agreement on Trump, Biden, or SOPA. It requires agreement that fourteen years is enough.

3. Put it in front of people who can still stop it: White House counsel, DOJ leadership, the pardon office, New Zealand’s Prime Minister and Justice Minister.

4. Pray for him if that is your language. I asked for that on X after I left his house. I am asking again.

Kim Dotcom is not a mascot. He is a test of whether the United States can admit a prosecution was born in a lobby and should die in an office.

I sat with him. I will not look away while the last door closes.

Stay vigilant.

— George

At the time, the account already showed an outstanding balance of approximately $1,800.

New primary documents prove the problem never went away.

The June 2026 Evidence

Screenshots provided to us by a whistleblower, and taken directly from the AT&T customer portal, along with the official billing statement issued June 24, 2026, tell a clear story.

The account remains under the name ROBERT H. BIDEN at 1101 30TH ST NW STE 500, WASHINGTON, DC 20007-3772 — an address long associated on the public record with Hunter Biden’s professional activities. The visible email domain in the portal is consistent with Rosemont Seneca, Hunter’s former firm.

Current status (as of late June 2026):

• Total due: $1,800.07 — flagged as “Past due — please pay immediately.”

• AutoPay is listed as scheduled for July 13, 2026, yet the account shows the full amount past due.

• The bill history graphic displays eight consecutive months (November 2025 through June 2026) all marked as past due in the exact amount of $1,800.07 each.

These are not old documents or secondary sources. They are current captures from AT&T’s own systems.

Direct Link to Our 2023 Reporting

The account number is identical to the one we examined in December 2023: 464064729470.

In that original piece we showed how documents from the Biden laptop archive established Hunter Biden as the primary account holder, with Joe Biden added as a secondary user. Secondary access on AT&T plans permits the user to view billing information, make plan changes, and manage the line — giving the secondary user significant control and privacy.

The 2023 documents already showed the account carrying an unpaid balance. The new 2026 evidence demonstrates that balance was never fully resolved and has now become a sustained, multi-month pattern of delinquency.

Read that report here:

What Does a $1,800 Monthly Bill Actually Represent?

This is not a basic single-line consumer plan. A recurring charge of this size typically reflects multiple lines, premium features, high data usage, international capabilities, or a bundled family/business plan.

Whatever the exact composition, the service has remained active while the bills have gone unpaid for many years. If Joe Biden’s private line was (or still is) one of the lines on this account, then communications potentially touching the highest levels of American government have been running on a chronically delinquent plan.

The Pattern and the Question It Raises

Dozens of consecutive months overdue on the exact same account we flagged nearly three years ago is not an oversight. It is a pattern.

Hunter Biden has been highly visible in recent weeks — active on social media with viral posts, appearing in long-form podcast interviews, and speaking candidly about politics, recovery, and the Democratic Party’s direction. Visibility at this level usually coincides with access to resources.

Yet the same AT&T account tied to his father’s private communications continues to show a persistent unpaid balance.

This raises straightforward questions:

• Why has this specific account remained delinquent for so long?

• Has AutoPay actually been processing, or has it been failing repeatedly?

• If the line associated with Joe Biden is still active on this plan, what does that say about the continuity of any private communications channel established years ago?

Paying a phone bill on time is basic. When it becomes a recurring failure on an account connected to a former President — and when that pattern was already publicly documented years earlier — it moves beyond personal finance into the realm of accountability.

Bottom Line

The documents are unambiguous.

The identical AT&T account (464064729470) under Robert H. Biden that GEORGE NEWS flagged in December 2023 for carrying an unpaid balance is still delinquent in June 2026 — with eight straight months of past-due status visible in the customer portal and confirmed by the official June 24 bill. The bill in its entirety is actually many years overdue.

Hunter Biden dominates headlines and social media right now. The bill linked to his father’s private line remains unpaid.

We will continue to monitor and publish primary documents on this matter. The public has a right to see whether basic contractual obligations tied to communications at the highest levels of power are being met.

Many thanks to our source who provided these to us.

Today, we revisit that story in greater detail. Hunter Biden is now active on Substack (@hunterbiden), sharing his own perspective. This makes it the right moment to lay out the documented timeline and what has (and hasn’t) changed according to the public record.

The Core of the 2024 Whistleblower Revelations — Expanded

Our reporting centered on BHR Partners (Bohai Harvest RST Equity Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd.), a China-backed private equity firm. Key established facts include:

• December 2013: BHR was formed with registered capital of approximately 30 million RMB (roughly $4.87 million at the time). It was controlled by Bohai Industrial Investment Fund, with significant backing from the state-owned Bank of China. The firm focused on mergers, acquisitions, and investments in state-owned enterprises.

• December 4, 2013: Then-Vice President Joe Biden traveled to China on Air Force Two with his son Hunter. During the trip, Hunter Biden arranged a meeting between his father and BHR CEO Jonathan Li. Photos from the trip later surfaced showing Joe Biden with Hunter and BHR executives, including Jonathan Li and managing partner Ming Xue.

• Hunter Biden’s Role: He served as a director on BHR’s board (initially described by his representatives as an unpaid position). In October 2017 — after Joe Biden’s vice presidency ended — Hunter (through his company Skaneateles LLC) invested approximately $420,000–$485,000 to acquire a 10% equity stake in BHR. House Oversight Committee records document specific wires, including a $250,000 transfer from Jonathan Li and Tan Ling, and a $10,000 wire from a BHR employee, with addresses linked to Biden family properties.

• Business Activity: BHR grew rapidly, managing over $1.7–2.1 billion in assets under management by the mid-2010s. It participated in deals such as investments in Chinese energy and chemical companies. One notable transaction involved helping a Chinese company pursue a major cobalt mine acquisition.

The CCP whistleblower claims centered on the impact of these arrangements on what was described as the “Biden Crime Family” network, along with leaks involving a Chinese server. These details aligned with the broader pattern of questions GEORGE NEWS has covered regarding elite financial entanglements.

Above: Context from the 2013 China trip involving Joe Biden and Hunter Biden (publicly circulated images from the period).

Where Things Stand Now — Expanded Legal & Business Timeline

Hunter Biden’s post-White House chapter includes several documented developments:

• 2023–2024 Legal Proceedings: Appointed special counsel investigated tax and gun-related matters. Hunter was convicted in June/July 2024 on three federal felony gun charges (lying about drug use on a firearm form and related counts). In September 2024, he pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges (three felonies and six misdemeanors) related to failure to pay taxes on millions in income.

• Pardon: In late 2024/early 2025, pResident Joe Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon to his son Hunter for the federal offenses.

• 2025 Disbarments: Hunter was disbarred by the District of Columbia Bar and the Connecticut Bar Association following the convictions.

• Financial & Personal Status: Reports have described ongoing financial pressures, including significant legal fees, lower-than-expected memoir sales, and other personal challenges. Hunter has described periods of “homelessness” after losing housing in the 2025 Palisades Fire.

• BHR Status: Hunter resigned from the BHR board years earlier (announced intent in 2019). His 10% stake was held through Skaneateles LLC. Public corporate updates on BHR’s current holdings, distributions, or operations since then have been limited. The historical financial flows and board involvement remain part of the congressional record.

Above: Example of the detailed Biden family influence peddling timeline released by the House Oversight Committee (public document).

Elite Networks and Transparency — Expanded

The whistleblower’s claims in 2024 raised serious, documented questions about how foreign capital and influence networks intersect with U.S. political families. House Oversight Committee investigations produced extensive timelines, bank records, and witness statements detailing wires, meetings, and business structures involving BHR and related entities.

Key patterns highlighted in the public record include:

• Use of multiple LLCs and associates to facilitate transactions.

• Timing of meetings and investments relative to Joe Biden’s vice presidential role.

• Limited transparency around returns or ongoing involvement after the initial stake purchase.

Media coverage of these specific China-related dealings has often been selective or limited compared to other stories. GEORGE NEWS has consistently focused on primary documents and timelines rather than partisan narratives. The core principle remains: full transparency benefits the public, regardless of the individuals or administrations involved.

Above: Publicly released Oversight Committee chart illustrating payment flows connected to Biden family associates and Chinese entities (example of the level of detail in the investigations).

Key Timeline Summary (for quick reference)

• Dec 2013: BHR formed; Joe Biden meets Jonathan Li on Air Force Two trip.

• 2014: Hunter and associate invest ~$485k into BHR.

• Oct 2017: Hunter acquires 10% stake via Skaneateles LLC (post-vice presidency)

• 2019: Hunter announces intent to step down from BHR board amid scrutiny. Devon Archer arranges for Elon Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro to replace him.

• 2023–2024: Federal investigations, trials, and convictions.

• Late 2024/early 2025: Presidential pardon.

• 2025: Disbarments in D.C. and Connecticut.

• 2026: Hunter active on Substack and X (@hunterbiden); limited new public updates on BHR operations.

The whistleblower’s claims in 2024 shone a light on BHR and these networks. The public record has grown with court outcomes, congressional documents, and Hunter Biden’s own recent platform activity — yet many original questions about transparency and accountability persist.

Special note to @hunterbiden: Since you’re now active on Substack sharing your perspective, readers benefit from seeing the full documented record alongside it. The public deserves maximum transparency on these matters.

We told you.

We told you on May 28, 2024, in a 13-point thread that racked up over a million views. We told you again on February 13, 2026, in the vindication update when the Cornyn-Paxton war was already underway. Everything we laid out — the Never Trump history, the self-dealing, the protection of RINOs, the McConnell-orbit ties, the trashing of Ken Paxton — has now been confirmed in the most expensive and embarrassing way possible.

Call us Nostradamus if you want. The receipts don’t lie.

The Viral Predictions That Just Came True

Here’s what we wrote in May 2024 (full thread here)

Then, on February 13, 2026 — as the Texas primary was heating up — we updated it (full thread here)

We were called alarmist. We were told LaCivita was a “winner” who delivered 2024. Now the same operative who protected Never Trump hires and attacked Paxton is the one who just torched nearly $100 million trying (and failing) to save John Cornyn.

The Career Arc That Reveals Everything (LegiStorm + NRSC Receipts)

According to LegiStorm’s employment history for Christopher Joseph LaCivita (born July 15, 1966, McKeesport, Pa.; Virginia Commonwealth University, political science, 1989; Purple Heart recipient):

• 2014: Executive Campaign Manager, Pat Roberts for U.S. Senate (Kansas) — longtime establishment incumbent.

• 2015–2016: Senior Adviser, Rand Paul 2016.

• 2018–2019: National Republican Strategist, RPC Strategies Inc.

• 2019–2022: Partner, FP1 Strategies LLC (frequently tied to McConnell-aligned operations).

• 2024: Senior Adviser / Co-Manager, Donald J. Trump for President 2024 Inc.

• 2025 – January 2026: Of Counsel, PLUS Communications LLC (a major GOP public affairs and lobbying firm).

• 2025 onward: Senior Adviser, Texans for a Conservative Majority (pro-Cornyn super PAC); also joined Lindsey Graham’s reelection campaign as senior adviser (announced June/July 2025), where he publicly attacked Project 2025 architect Paul Dans as trying to “torpedo” Trump’s campaign while defending Graham as Trump’s “longtime friend and ally.”

Notice the pattern. No senior White House job after co-managing the 2024 victory (unlike Susie Wiles). He went straight back to the private-sector revolving door and the old NRSC/RINO protection circuit. The same man who once ran political operations for the NRSC is now helping the NRSC’s traditional allies (Cornyn is a former NRSC chairman) wage war on MAGA challengers.

Chris LaCivita is not an ideologue who had a change of heart. He is a professional operative whose business model has always thrived on access to whoever holds the checkbook.

The $92+ Million Disaster in Texas — And the NRSC’s Role

In 2025, Cornyn brought LaCivita on as senior adviser to Texans for a Conservative Majority. Establishment donors, the NRSC machine, and leadership poured resources into the effort. Reports show at least $92 million spent to help Cornyn (AdImpact tracking), with the super PAC alone raising ~$35.6 million and spending heavily. Total advertising in the Republican primary race approached or exceeded $128 million — one of the most expensive Senate primaries in U.S. history.

Timeline of the collapse:

• March 3, 2026 primary: No candidate reaches majority.

• May 19, 2026: President Trump endorses Ken Paxton.

• May 26, 2026 runoff: Paxton defeats Cornyn ~63.5% – 36.5%.

A four-term incumbent in a state Donald Trump won by double digits got routed after the base finally got the endorsement it wanted. LaCivita’s side spent like it was protecting the last lifeboat on the Titanic — and still lost decisively.

The NRSC (LaCivita’s old employer and institutional home) played its traditional role: backing the incumbent through joint fundraising committees that allowed cheaper ad buys and funneled hard dollars into the protection racket. This is the machine at work.

The NRSC Double Standard: $92 Million for One RINO, Next to Nothing for Kari Lake

Here’s what makes this even more galling.

The same National Republican Senatorial Committee where LaCivita served as Political Director in 2002 and 2010 — the same committee that once paid him and deployed him to save establishment incumbents like Pat Roberts — chose to dump tens of millions into saving John Cornyn in deep-red Texas.

Meanwhile, in Arizona — a genuine battleground — Kari Lake ran for the U.S. Senate in 2024 against Democrat Ruben Gallego. The NRSC gave nominal endorsement and joined her joint fundraising committee, but the institutional effort was a fraction of what was deployed in Texas. Democrats and their allies massively outspent the Republican side. Lake was left to fend for herself with far less establishment firepower while the NRSC machine was busy elsewhere propping up RINOs.

They didn’t spend a dime — not in any meaningful, comparable way — on a true MAGA fighter in a competitive state. The priority was protecting the club, not winning the long game or empowering the base.

This is the LaCivita/NRSC worldview in action: Protect the incumbents who keep the donor class and consultant class happy. Attack or ignore the insurgents. Cash the checks. Even when the “safe” bet loses the primary anyway and the real battlegrounds get starved.

The LaCivita Pattern: Graham, Cornyn, and the Consultant Class

LaCivita didn’t just land with Cornyn. He also signed on as senior adviser to Lindsey Graham’s reelection effort in South Carolina — another longtime RINO target facing primary heat. In both cases, the same operative who helped manage Trump’s 2024 win became the hired muscle trying to keep these incumbents safe from America First challengers.

Mainstream outlets have been remarkably quiet about the scale of the embarrassment in Texas. A $92+ million primary loss in a deep-red state, with Trump’s own 2024 co-campaign manager on the incumbent side and the NRSC machine fully engaged, should be front-page news in conservative media. Instead, crickets — because exposing it would require admitting the consultant class and RINO protection racket are still very much alive and well.

The Vindication Is Complete — Now What?

We said in 2024 that LaCivita was more interested in grift and protecting his old networks than in empowering the base. We said he trashed Paxton before and would do it again if the price was right. We said the operation under his influence was prioritizing the wrong people and the wrong fights.

Paxton’s 64-36 thrashing of Cornyn — after Trump finally stepped in — is the final receipt.

The GOP has a choice: keep outsourcing its toughest primaries to operatives whose track record includes Never Trump signaling in 2021, suspected roles in RINO impeachment efforts in 2023, self-dealing allegations in 2024, and now a nearly $100 million embarrassment in 2026... or start treating these consultants like the liabilities they are.

Primary every RINO.
Support fighters like Ken Paxton who actually deliver for the base.
Demand transparency on where donor money goes and who’s really running the ops.
Sideline the snakes who wear the red hat just long enough to get paid, then pivot back to protecting the old guard.

Our 2024 thread wasn’t a conspiracy, as many said. It was pattern recognition. The 2026 Texas disaster — and the parallel protection of Lindsey Graham — is the proof.

The truth doesn’t expire. It just keeps winning.

GEORGE NEWS is reader-supported investigative journalism. If this kind of accountability reporting matters to you — especially when mainstream outlets stay silent on embarrassing GOP spending disasters and consultant grift — consider becoming a paid subscriber at georgenews.org OR make a donation here: https://georgenews.support.

Share this everywhere. Tag your reps and donors. The next primary cycle is already forming.

We told you in 2024. We’re telling you again now.

Primary the problems. Back the proven fighters. Drain the actual swamp — even when it wears a red hat.

(Spending figures drawn from AdImpact, FEC reporting via Texas Tribune, NYT, and contemporaneous coverage. LaCivita employment history confirmed via LegiStorm PowerBrief. Election results certified via Texas officials and major outlets. All original X threads linked above. This is opinion and analysis based on public records and our own prior reporting.)

~GEORGE

This isn’t a typical “procedural spat” in California courts. This is lawfare—weaponized litigation designed to bankrupt, exhaust, and silence a small nonprofit doing exactly what the First Amendment exists to protect: core political reporting and newsgathering on matters of massive public concern. And it exposes how California’s vaunted “anti-SLAPP” statute, meant to shield speech, was twisted here into a tool that prolonged the abuse instead.

Let me break it down for you, step by step, because the stakes couldn’t be higher for every independent journalist, researcher, activist, and citizen who dares speak truth to power.

The Players and the Speech at Issue

Marco Polo isn’t some shadowy operation. It’s a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded by Garrett Ziegler—a former Trump White House aide—dedicated to exposing corruption and blackmail through meticulous research and public records. Their work centered on the Hunter Biden laptop: materials of undeniable national significance involving the son of the then-President (and now involving his inner circle).

The speech? Political reporting and commentary published online and in print. It addressed individuals “closely connected to the most powerful levels of government.” As the Reply Brief rightly notes, this occupies “the highest rung of First Amendment protection” and falls into no recognized exception.

Enter P. Kevin Morris—Hunter Biden’s high-powered attorney, benefactor (he reportedly loaned Hunter millions), and a Hollywood-connected figure. In 2023, Morris sued Ziegler and Marco Polo in Los Angeles Superior Court. The claims included civil harassment, criminal impersonation (under Penal Code § 529), false light, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. At the core: allegations that Ziegler (or someone tied to Marco Polo) impersonated a Democratic donor to extract info about the laptop, then “doxed” Morris and subjected him to harassment.

The trial court and parties conceded the speech implicated protected activity under the anti-SLAPP statute (Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 425.16). Petitioners met their Prong 1 burden. The burden then shifted to Morris to show his claims had both minimal merit (evidentiary) and legal sufficiency.

Here’s where it goes off the rails.

How Anti-SLAPP Became the Problem, Not the Solution

Anti-SLAPP laws exist to quickly dismiss meritless suits that chill public participation—exactly the kind of strategic lawsuit against public participation this one appeared to be. Petitioners filed the special motion to strike on June 20, 2023. The trial court didn’t rule until October 13, 2023. California Supreme Court denied review on November 12, 2025—more than two years later. Morris then tried to voluntarily dismiss the entire complaint less than a month after that.

No trial ever happened. But the parties burned through hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs over nearly three years. Compelled affidavits. Massive legal bills. Years of uncertainty for a small nonprofit.

The Reply Brief nails the constitutional failure: “The anti-SLAPP statute is designed to prevent this type of protracted, burdensome litigation involving protected speech. Its failure here raises important First Amendment questions that warrant this Court’s review.”

Even more damning: The claims rested on criminal statutes lacking any express private right of action. One such claim was struck; a materially similar one was allowed to proceed. The California courts, per the brief, misallocated the burden—putting it on Petitioners instead of requiring Morris to prove legal sufficiency. On appeal, the Court of Appeal found Petitioners had “forfeited” the argument despite the statute’s plain text placing the burden on the plaintiff.

This isn’t neutral procedure. It’s a blueprint for suppression: “using state civil procedure to burden, punish, and chill disfavored political speech by out-of-state defendants without the constitutional safeguards that ordinarily restrain the government.”

Sound familiar? It should. This is the same playbook we’ve seen against other truth-tellers—prolonged litigation not to win on the merits, but to bleed the target dry.

The brief ties it directly to this Court’s unanimous holding in National Rifle Ass’n of America v. Vullo, 602 U.S. 175 (2024): Government (or here, courts enabling private actors) can’t use threats of legal sanctions or coercion to suppress disfavored speech. Allowing baseless claims predicated on criminal statutes to survive anti-SLAPP review does exactly that.

Why This Case Matters Nationally—and to Every One of Us

The Petition doesn’t attack the facial validity of California’s anti-SLAPP law. It challenges its application in this case, where it failed to protect core political speech and newsgathering. And that failure has national implications.

Anti-SLAPP statutes (or similar laws) have proliferated across states—some following the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, others with their own frameworks. Divergence creates a patchwork that chills interstate political speech. Out-of-state speakers like Marco Polo (Wyoming LLC, Ziegler not in California) get hammered with California process.

Respondent’s Brief in Opposition (as dissected in the Reply) identifies no material misstatements in the Petition. It mostly relitigates facts the lower courts already resolved in Petitioners’ favor or tries to manufacture disputes. It concedes the speech was protected activity and that Petitioners met their initial burden. But it stays silent on legal sufficiency for the central “criminal impersonation” claim—never even producing the phone number at issue.

The Reply Brief puts it plainly: “Respondent thus takes the peculiar position that the anti-SLAPP statute is unreliable, and a party engaging in protected speech must be financially prepared to litigate not only an anti-SLAPP motion but also additional motions and appellate review. That is not the kind of freedom of speech and of the press the Constitution guarantees.”

Jurisdiction is proper under 28 U.S.C. § 1257. The constitutional questions were fully litigated through the anti-SLAPP proceedings, resolved by the Court of Appeal, and became final with the California Supreme Court’s denial of review. Post-remittitur proceedings (partial fees, dismissal) don’t moot the core injury.

The Human and Constitutional Cost

Hundreds of thousands in costs. Years of litigation. A small nonprofit diverted from its mission of exposing corruption. This is the real-world toll of lawfare. And it sends a chilling message: Dig too deep into powerful people and their enablers, and you’ll face the same.

Morris ultimately had to pay $50,000 in attorney’s fees after claims crumbled—but that’s a fraction of the true burden. The Reply Brief argues the First Amendment doesn’t condition protection on “procedural perfection or financial resources.”

This case also implicates the public’s right to receive information on matters of public concern—not just the speaker’s right to publish it.

Time for SCOTUS to Act (Supreme Court Rule 10(c))

The Petition warrants review because it presents an important, recurring federal question of national importance: the constitutional limits on anti-SLAPP procedures when they burden rather than protect core political speech and newsgathering by out-of-state defendants.

As the Reply Brief concludes: “The speech at issue in this case involved reporting and commentary concerning individuals closely connected to government and matters of substantial public concern. Such speech occupies the highest rung of First Amendment protection, and the constitutional injury extends beyond the parties themselves because the First Amendment protects not only the right to speak, but also the public’s right to receive information concerning matters of public concern.”

The Petition should be granted.

Folks, this is why independent outlets like GEORGE NEWS exist. We don’t have billionaire backers or law firms on retainer. We rely on you—our subscribers and supporters—to keep exposing these stories. Cases like this aren’t abstract legal fights; they’re battles over whether the First Amendment remains a shield for the little guy or gets turned into a sword for the connected.

If the Supreme Court takes this up, it could set precedent protecting researchers, journalists, and nonprofits nationwide from abusive litigation. If not, the blueprint for silencing dissent gets stronger.

More here:

“We believe it's the deepest digital colonoscopy ever performed on a sitting U.S. First Family”~ Garrett Ziegler, 501c3.

The documents, both marked “Confidential | Not for Distribution” and never intended for public release, show the university scrambling to address safety concerns and community backlash in fall 2023.

1. The Antisemitism Action Plan Dashboard: “Ensure All Members… Are Aware of the Process for Reporting Acts of Antisemitism or Other Acts of Hate”

The first document is titled “ANTISEMITISM ACTION PLAN DASHBOARD” (last updated November 18, 2023).

Under the “Safety and Security” section, one explicit commitment reads verbatim:

“Ensure all members of the Penn community are aware of the process for reporting acts of antisemitism or other acts of hate; when report occurs, taking action.”

Status: Listed as “Complete / Ongoing”
Most recent action: “President Magill’s November 12 message to the Penn community provided details on Penn’s bias reporting system. Follow up remains ongoing.”

The dashboard also details the formal charging of a University Task Force on Antisemitism on November 16, 2023 (led by Penn Dental Dean Mark Wolff), reviews of event-space reservation policies, and enhanced security measures for Jewish centers. It links to an internal task-force update page:
https://antisemitism-action-plan.upenn.edu/task-force/messages/nov17

This plan was developed as part of a broader push that included education initiatives, student advisory groups, and partnerships with Jewish organizations.

2. The Palestine Writes Literary Festival: The Event That Preceded — and Sparked — the Action Plan

The second leaked document — “Confidential Background Document: Palestine Writes Literature Festival” — provides the university’s own internal talking points on the three-day event held on Penn’s campus September 22-24, 2023.

Key admissions from the confidential memo:

• The festival was organized by an independent non-profit group but took place on university grounds and featured 125 speakers.

• Programming included book talks, film screenings, and panels focused on Palestinian literature, art, and culture.

• Speakers included Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen and Arabic Booker Prize winner Ibrahim Nasrallah — but also individuals who sparked major controversy, such as Roger Waters and Marc Lamont Hill.

• While Penn insists “this public event was not organized by the University,” a Penn faculty member in the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department helped organize it.

• Several official Penn departments and centers sponsored specific sessions (including the Middle East Center, Cinema & Media Studies, Wolf Humanities Center, Sachs Program for Arts Innovation, Kelly Writers House, and Modern Middle Eastern Studies).

• Some Penn courses initially listed attendance at the festival as a class requirement (accommodations were later offered after student concerns were raised).

• The university provided additional police security to Penn Hillel during the surrounding Jewish holidays.

The document repeatedly notes that “many of the Penn affiliates involved were not aware of the controversial speakers when they agreed to sponsor” and that no university units sponsored the most problematic sessions.

The Timeline Tells the Story

The Palestine Writes festival occurred in late September 2023.
Just weeks later, in mid-November 2023, UPenn’s leadership publicly messaged the community about its bias reporting system and formally launched the Antisemitism Task Force — exactly as captured in these confidential dashboards and background memos.

George News obtained the documents from a source concerned about transparency and accountability at one of America’s most elite universities. They were never meant to see the light of day.

UPenn has not responded to requests for comment on the leaks.

What do you think? Should universities be required to publicly disclose these kinds of internal “confidential” plans — especially when they involve campus safety, event hosting, and the protection of Jewish students? Drop your thoughts below — and subscribe to George News for more exclusive document drops and campus accountability reporting.

Sources (both leaked confidential documents on file):

• Antisemitism Action Plan Dashboard (11.19.23)

• Background and Talking Points: Palestine Writes Literature Festival 2023

Share this widely. Truth matters.

~GEORGE~

This isn’t just politics as usual. This is outright deception, exploiting a noble cause like the Fostering Success Act to ambush a fellow conservative. Georgia voters deserve the truth, and George News is here to deliver it unfiltered.

The Setup: A “Charity” Video Turns Political Poison

It all started in September 2025, when a partner at [Redacted] and a key operative for Jackson’s Fostering Success Act initiative reached out to Jones’ team. The pitch? Lt. Gov. Jones, known for his genuine passion for helping foster kids, was asked to record a short video praising Rick Jackson’s work on the tax credit program that supports youth aging out of foster care.

The emails paint a picture of relentless pursuit. [Redacted] begged Jones’ team multiple times to schedule the filming.

They provided scripts, suggested locations (like the Georgia Chamber of Commerce), and even offered teleprompter setups.

Jones, ever the statesman, agreed – recording two videos on a green screen in early December 2025.

One focused on the Fostering Success Act itself, the other a direct shoutout to Jackson:

“Rick Jackson knows firsthand what it’s like to grow up in foster care, and that’s what makes his commitment to helping others so powerful. He’s taken his own experience and turned it into action, creating real opportunities for foster youth, especially those aging out of the system through the Fostering Success Act. We’re incredibly grateful for his heart and his leadership. Thank you, Rick, for all you do for Georgia!”

Jones’s team delivered the videos on December 9, 2025. [Name redacted] responded enthusiastically: “[name redacted] – thank you so much for these!! They’re great!” But here’s the twist – this “thank you” came just one day before Jackson’s highly publicized $1 million donation to Trump’s MAGA PAC on December 10, 2025. Coincidence? Hardly.

“Fostering Success Act Video”

“Rick Jackson Video”

Sources close to the race tell George News this was a blatant stunt to curry favor for a potential Trump endorsement – one that ultimately went to Burt Jones instead.

The emails show no indication that these videos were for anything but year-end donations to the foster program. In fact, when a Jones representative asked for clarification – “Just to confirm - is this for a specific event or just general use?” – [Name redacted] dodged the question entirely. And the timing? These exchanges ramped up the same week “Georgians for Integrity,” a shadowy dark-money group now linked to anti-Jones attack ads, first hit Georgia airwaves.

The Betrayal: From Praise to Attack Ad

Fast forward to March 2026, and Jackson – now officially in the race – has repurposed Jones’s kind words into a brutal TV spot. The ad juxtaposes Jones’ praise with recent criticisms, branding Jones a “liar” for calling out Jackson’s tactics. It’s a masterclass in manipulation: using Jones’ own voice against him, all while hiding behind the veil of a charitable cause.

Recent X posts amplify the outrage. Cole Muzio (@ColeMuzio), president of Frontline Policy Council, called it out directly: “I genuinely hope a nascent campaign wasn’t being planned when Mr. Jackson’s team scripted a video for @burtjonesforga. I’ve refrained from criticism this far, but this appears to be one of the more underhanded things I’ve seen in politics. #gapol”

Holly Kesler (@HollyKesler) went nuclear: “🚨MIND-BLOWING GEORGIA GOV-RACE SCANDAL EXPLODES!😲 I simply can’t believe Rick Jackson’s campaign BEGGED Burt Jones—not once, but multiple times—to drop his name in that glowing ‘good friend’ praise back in December 2025... only to twist it into a savage TV ad calling Jones a LIAR using his OWN words!🤯 And not only that, used his foster care experience and organization as a part of this!!! Disgusting! ... THIS ISN’T DIRTY POLITICS! THESE ARE SICK, TWISTED MIND GAMES!! WAKE UP, GEORGIA!!!”

Kesler’s post includes screenshots of the emails, which also match the chains in our copies, showing the persistent badgering from Jackson’s team.

Jackson’s Troubled Past: IRS Woes and Dark Money Ties

This isn’t Jackson’s first brush with controversy. The self-made billionaire, who rose from foster care to helm a massive healthcare empire, has a history of legal entanglements with the IRS totaling tens of millions in disputes – issues that raise serious questions about his fitness for office. While Jackson touts his rags-to-riches story, critics point to these financial red flags as evidence of slippery dealings.

Add to that the dark-money ads from “Georgians for Integrity,” which have hammered Jones with baseless smears. Jones’s camp has directly accused Jackson of orchestrating these attacks, leading to a defamation lawsuit filed by Jackson just last week. As reported by Atlanta News First, Jones is casting Jackson as the puppet master behind these shadowy efforts, further muddying the GOP primary waters.

Why This Matters for Georgia

Burt Jones, a proven leader with a track record of fighting for conservative values, doesn’t deserve this backstabbing. He’s been transparent about his criticisms of Jackson – from questionable campaign spending to these underhanded tactics. Jackson’s move exploits a genuine act of goodwill, dragging a program meant to help vulnerable kids into the political muck.

Georgians, ask yourselves: Do you want a governor who schemes behind the scenes, twists words for personal gain, and hides behind charity? Or one like Burt Jones, who puts Georgia first without the games?

This is breaking news, and George News will continue to dig deeper. Stay tuned for updates.

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But the grudge is personal — and it started with our viral threads that exposed the insiders. Here’s the full, concise timeline:

April 9, 2024 – our bombshell thread exposed Charlie Spies (Hillary Clinton voter, Jeb/Romney guy, and election fraud denier who praised Biden’s inauguration & called Trump a “grifter”). LaCivita had installed him as RNC Chief Counsel overseeing “election integrity” and protected him as long as possible. Thread went mega-viral. Spies was gone by early May — fired by Trump THREE times (not the “resigned” spin LaCivita pushed).

May 28, 2024 – OUR 13-point follow-up thread directly hammered LaCivita for hiring Never Trumpers, leaking fake stories to WaPo, redirecting millions to his own firms, praising McConnell allies like Jon Lerner & Marc Short, and more. Point #2: “We need a true Trump loyalist like Paul Dans... in this critical Chief Counsel position.”

(3.3K likes, 1M+ views)

July 30, 2024 – Project 2025 becomes Dem attack fodder. LaCivita personally put the screws to Dans and forced him out as director. His statement: “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed... it will not end well for you”. Dans later calls it campaign “malpractice” — overconfidence, failing to prep for Biden→Harris switch (NYT/Guardian).

2025–2026 – Dans launches the America First primary challenge to Trump-endorsed Sen. Lindsey Graham. LaCivita (now Graham advisor) fires back: “What a loser — same guy who spent months trying to sink the @realDonaldTrump campaign...” (July 30, 2025).

“The reason the campaign [not DJT himself] came down like a ton of bricks on Dans, was because George News revealed [with posted proof that was later confirmed by media] that Charlie Spies WAS dismissed by Trump. Not once, but THREE times!” -via one of our WH sources.

Chris LaCivita made sure Charlie Spies was kept on as long as possible. With Spies fired, we put a name forward to help replace him: Paul Dans. He was also the grand mastermind behind Project 2025.

Boom. Gone!

To this day, there’s a lot of animosity towards Paul Dans because of all this. And as they say in ‘Game of Thrones’, “the North remembers”.

(Plus the alleged campaign mail invoicing schemes, 15%+ manager fees/incentives, and FEC lawyer needs — fits the exact pattern of loyalty-vs-grift fights our X threads exposed.)

This is MORE than “just about policy”.

Project 2025 is now the Trump administration’s blueprint (“beyond my wildest dreams,” per Dans). It’s pure score-settling: LaCivita defends the RINO/endorsement machine (Graham in SC, Cornyn in TX) and his old hires; Dans exposed the insiders, named the loyalist solution, and delivered the detailed America First vetting plan Trump is actually using.

MAGA has factions. Real ones remember who shielded Spies... and who got blacklisted for naming the fix.

“The North remembers”. South Carolina voters will decide in 2026.

~GN

We’ve all heard the passionate arguments about “ancestral rights” to the land of Israel. But apply that same logic to the genetic empire of the greatest conqueror in history, and suddenly billions of us could stake a claim to half of Asia. Time to rethink how we weaponize heritage in endless conflicts.

In the heated debates surrounding ancestral rights, historical claims, and who truly “belongs” on a piece of land, the conversation often boils down to this: “Our ancestors were here first—or longest—or suffered the most.” It’s a narrative that fuels identity, justifies policies, and sadly, perpetuates conflict. Nowhere is this more intense than in the land once called Judea, now the State of Israel—a place where Jewish people point to 3,000+ years of biblical, archaeological, and continuous (even if minority) presence; where Palestinians trace roots to ancient Canaanites, Arab conquests, and centuries under Ottoman and British rule; and where both sides invoke exile, persecution, survival, and divine/historical promise.

But what happens when we take that exact same ancestral logic and apply it universally, without exception? What if we followed the bloodlines to their most explosive conclusions?

Enter Genghis Khan.

The Mongol conqueror (born Temüjin ~1162) didn’t just build the largest contiguous land empire in human history—he left a genetic legacy that dwarfs most others. From the Pacific to the Caspian Sea, his armies swept across modern China, Mongolia, Central Asia, Russia, the Middle East, and into Eastern Europe. His sons, grandsons (like Kublai Khan of Yuan Dynasty fame), and descendants ruled empires for centuries, often through strategic marriages, vast harems, and integration of conquered populations.

A 2003 study in the American Journal of Human Genetics dropped a bombshell:

A specific Y-chromosome lineage, traced to Genghis Khan and his close male relatives, is carried by about 0.5% of the world’s male population—roughly 16 million men at the time (likely higher now with population growth). When including broader descent (mitochondrial lines, autosomal DNA), estimates suggest 1 in 200 people alive today—around 40 million globally—carry some genetic connection to the Great Khan. That’s not folklore; it’s peer-reviewed DNA evidence spanning Asia, Europe, and beyond.

Why the explosion? Genghis and his lineage fathered enormous numbers of children. Historical records (Persian chronicler Ata-Malik Juvaini and others) describe thousands of direct descendants living in privilege by the mid-13th century. The Mongol policy of rewarding loyalty with marriage alliances and concubinage spread those genes far and wide. Today, that signature appears strongly in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, northern China, Pakistan—and traces reach into Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

So here’s the provocative question: If “ancestral rights” are determined by blood ties and historical dominion, don’t millions (perhaps billions, if we go back far enough) have a legitimate claim to Mongolia—the Khan’s homeland—or vast regions of China, ruled by his Yuan Dynasty successors? Could descendants pitch a tent in the Gobi, demand land in Inner Mongolia, or file a historical grievance over Beijing’s Forbidden City?

Of course that sounds ridiculous. We’d dismiss it as absurd. Yet it’s the mirror image of absolutist ancestral arguments elsewhere.

This isn’t to equate situations—Israel’s secular creation in 1948 came after millennia of diaspora, repeated exiles, the Holocaust’s near-annihilation of European Jewry, and international recognition via the UN Partition Plan and Balfour Declaration. Jewish ties to the land are etched in archaeology (Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient synagogues), texts, and unbroken (if diminished) presence. Of course, that’s if the DNA matches.

Palestinian roots run deep—families tied to villages for generations, with ancestry blending Canaanite, Arab, and other layers.

But the Genghis Khan parallel exposes the slippery slope. If DNA + ancient presence = unbreakable claim, then where do we stop? Charlemagne’s descendants (millions of Europeans) could claim France, Germany, Italy. Niall of the Nine Hostages’ Y-lineage entitles many Irish to royal status. The Lemba in Africa carry Jewish priestly markers—does that reopen old debates? Go back further: we’re all African migrants from 70,000 years ago. Universal claim to Ethiopia?

Human history is endless migration, conquest, and mixing. Empires rise, fall, and leave genetic echoes. Clinging to ancient bloodlines as the final arbiter of modern sovereignty ignores treaties, self-determination, practicality, and the reality of shared spaces in 2026.

True peace rarely comes from digging deeper into disputed graves—it comes from looking forward. Compromise, two-state frameworks (however imperfect), federations, or economic integration where history informs but doesn’t dictate. Weaponizing heritage risks eternal division in an era of global migration, climate displacement, and interconnected crises.

If your 23andMe lights up with Mongol markers, are you booking a flight to Ulaanbaatar? Or is it time we all evolve beyond ancestral score-settling?

What do you think, subscribers? Does this genetic thought experiment change how you view land claims anywhere? Drop your takes below—civil discussion encouraged. And if you’ve got your own DNA surprise story, share it.