A massive dump of files from a Chinese hacking group linked to the government in Beijing outlines a massive, state-backed effort to breach foreign government, corporate, military and infrastructure systems using holes in security from US companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft, the Washington Post reports.

The hacker who hacked the Chinese hacker group posted a trove of more than 550 records on the code-sharing platform Github (which likely made the executives at Discord wipe their corporate brow).  Cybersecurity experts believe the files are authentic.  “We rarely get such unfettered access to the inner workings of any intelligence operation,” said John Hultquist, chief analyst at Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant Intelligence. “We have every reason to believe this is the authentic data of a contractor supporting global and domestic cyberespionage operations out of China.”

The data dump is not a re-broadcast of previously stolen information.  Instead, the records contain logs, spreadsheets, and other documents laying out targets of iSoon, a Shanghai-based broker for hacked information that has links to Chinese military and intelligence operations.  The logs show hackers were able to gain access to 95 gigabytes of immigration data from India and call logs from a South Korean cell phone provider.

Claiming she fears the suspect would be immediately released on the streets of New York, Republican Maricopa County (Arizona) Attorney Rachel Mitchell has instructed her staff to refuse an extradition request by New York officials for a suspected murderer arrested in her jurisdiction, NBC News reports.

The suspect, Raad Noan Almansoori, 26, is wanted in connection with the murder of 38-year-old Denisse Oleas-Arancibia at a Manhattan hotel earlier this month.  Almansoori was arrested in Arizona for the non-fatal stabbings of a woman.  During questioning in Arizona, he also reportedly implicated himself in a string of assaults across the country including an attempted murder in Florida.

“This is not aimed the New York Police Department at all. I know they did a hard job, they did a good job, but we will not be agreeing to extradition,” Mitchell said. “I’ve instructed my extradition attorneys not to agree to that. We’re going to keep him here.” Phoenix, incidentally, has a murder rate (11.6/110k) higher than Manhattan (5/100k).

In a conference call with supporters of his failed presidential campaign, Florida Republican Governor and generally unlikeable fella Ron DeSantis took the warning of the GOP’s internal White Replacement theory, according to NBC News saying of a potential Trump VP pick, “Now we have a diverse Republican Party. I want everybody in the fold, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t want people representing 10, 15% of the party being in the driver’s seat.”

Those “10, 15%” DeSantis refers to are an overestimation of the number of people of color within the Party, and perhaps a reference to the only remaining challenger to Donald Trump in the campaign, Nikki Haley.

At long last one of these shitbags finally acknowledges the city that they’re all based in and says it’s time to leave it for redder pastures. Of course it’s got everything to do with Trump and nothing about all the crime, migrants, diversity, wokeness, and all that shit they complain about.

In a letter that can only be compared to a plea by the San Francisco 49ers to NFL’s commissioner to reduce the margin of their Super Bowl loss unilaterally despite how the game was played, a non-Habba lawyer for Donald Trump asked New York Judge Arthur  Engoron to effective void the $354 million (plus interest) judgment against Trump, saying the award should be recalculated because the defense wasn’t given opportunity to file a counter-settlement offer despite New York Attorney General Letitia James’s initial calculation of the judgment having been submitted to the Court more than six weeks before the amount was announced.

“The Court’s Decision and Order After Non-Jury Trial, dated February 16, 2024 … directed the Clerk of the Court to ‘enter judgment’,” attorney Clifford Robert asserts.  “Notwithstanding, the Attorney General has now taken it upon herself to submit a proposed judgment to the Clerk of the Court without notice to the Defendants and without conferring with Defendants’ counsel, clearly hoping that the Clerk will issue the Proposed Judgment before Defendants even have a chance to review it, let alone submit a proposed counter-judgment. This conduct not only violates the February 16 Decision, but it is clearly designed and intended to prejudice the Defendants.  […]

“Defendants therefore request that the Court set a return date for the Proposed Judgment that affords Defendants sufficient time to submit a proposed counter-judgment. To deprive Defendants of the opportunity to submit a proposed counter-judgment would be contrary to fundamental fairness and due process.”

Remember Mike Lindell, the conspiracy-selling amateur somnologist who dabbles in election meddling?  On top of his failing mutilated foam business, Lindell’s amassing court judgments against him like he was a Republican candidate for national office, and on Wednesday, it just got worse.

A federal court in Minnesota ordered Lindell to pay computer programmer Robert Zeidman $5 million Zeidman won for debunking Lindell’s claims that data allegedly from voting machines Lindell had proved election interference.  With more than four decades of programming experience, Zeidman handily debunked Lindell’s claim that foreign hackers altered the results by demonstrating that Lindell’s data set was literal junk:  it was just sets of figures with no logic or reason.

Unfortunately for Lindell, he attempted to “put his money where his mouth was,” and during an August 2021 “cyber symposium” in South Dakota, Lindell offered a $5 million bounty for anyone who could disprove his claims.  Zeidman did just that, as a court confirmed last April.  Lindell, however, never paid the money, forcing Zeidman to go back to court to get this statement from the order:  “Plaintiff is awarded $5 million plus post-judgment interest beginning April 19, 2023, to be paid within 30 days of issuance of this Order, per the Arbitration Award. LET JUDGMENT BE ENTERRED ACCORDINGLY.”  [emphasis in the original]

Note: The headline is not a verbatim quote from Alina Habba being asked to comment on right wing legal douche Andrew McCarthy’s take on how Trump’s appeal in Manhattan is going to go. It’s just pretty goddamned close to what Habba actually said to Martha McCallum. Arguably just as snappy.

NYPD investigators believe they’ve solved two mysteries in one fell swoop: What happened to the left leg of a man who was struck and killed by a train at the Spring Street subway station in Soho, Manhattan on February 12th, and why the hell workers found a human leg on the tracks near the 167th Street station in the Bronx on Saturday. As ABC 7 explains, it turns out the leg somehow got lodged in the bottom of a passing train – likely separate from the one that struck the man – and then finally fell out on the tracks nine miles north in the Bronx at some point over the following six days.

A new Quinnipiac University national survey finds former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley leading President Joe Biden 46 to 43 percent in a hypothetical matchup. In the not-hypothetical matchup Biden leads fat former President Trump 49 to 45 percent, a slight contraction from the 50 to 44 percent lead for Biden QU found last month, but still enough to cause the fanboys to freak out.

The survey also found, at 21 percent, “preserving democracy” the number one most important issue for respondents, that Joe Biden is seen as more ethical, moral, and empathetic than Trump, and…

Yeah this all sounds like a center-left wet dream of what a normal, not irreparably fucking twisted and misinformed electorate looks like but this is what Quinnipiac found so we’re carrying it.

“Speaker Mike Johnson delivered a presentation at a weekend GOP retreat that – although it was billed as a map to keeping the House majority – took on a surprisingly religious tone, according to two people in the room,” says the lede to a Wednesday Politico report on the Republican shindig at the Oriental Hotel in Miami. And wow, Mike Johnson took a religious tone? Get the fuck out of here.

That silly intro aside, the story includes some comical quotes from “alarmed” attendees, like one attendee saying “I’m not at church,” and that Johnson’s presentation was “horrible.” Another said “I think what he was trying to do, but failed on the execution of it, was try to bring us together. The sermon was so long he couldn’t bring it back to make the point.” Sources described Johnson as whining about declining church attendance in the United States in a speech that was supposed to be about policy and strategy for the House of Representatives’ Republican conference.

For as much as we mocked Kevin McCarthy for the “Sonny Bono speech” that came just weeks before he was removed, at least his stupid metaphor had something to do with legislating. Sort of.

Hunterghazi special counsel David Weiss on Wednesday asked a California federal judge to overrule a Nevada federal magistrate’s grant of bail to James Comer and Jim Jordan’s Russian-paid pal Alex Smirnov, explaining that the asshole has the means, method, and motive to flee prosecution.

“No condition or combination of conditions will reasonably assure the appearance of the defendant Alexander Smirnov as required. As discussed in more detail below, the nature and circumstances of the offense, weight of the evidence, and the fact that Smirnov’s ties to the community are weak establish that Smirnov should be detained. But, in addition, there are four indisputable facts related to the characteristics of Smirnov that compel detention. First, he claims to have contacts with multiple foreign intelligence agencies and had plans to leave the United States two days after he was arrested last week for a months-long, multi-country foreign trip. During this trip, the defendant claimed to be meeting with foreign intelligence contacts. Those foreign intelligence agencies could resettle Smirnov outside the United States if he were released,” wrote Weiss, before going on to explain how Smirnov lied about access to a bank account with a $6 million balance and his ability to obtain an Israeli passport so that was really, seriously fucking stupid to grant him bail.

Russ Vought responds to the Politico "Christian nationalism" controversy:

"They're just trying to scare Christians across the country from using the political process. This is part of a 100 year strategy and it's to level accusations…

"We should provide religious liberty for… pic.twitter.com/4VfMKUlEqX

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) February 21, 2024

Former Trump Administration shitweasel Russ Vought on Wednesday was not pleased with Politico’s Tuesday reporting headlined “Trump allies prepare to infuse ‘Christian nationalism’ in second administration,” complaining to Steve Bannon that “If you’re a Christian they want to call you a ‘Christian nationalist,'” and then, not five seconds later, saying “We’re meant to be a Christian nation, we should be a Christian nation, we should provide religious liberty for…” and blah blah blah.

“Western Civilization does not work without the underpinnings of a Judeo-Christian worldview that is the bedrock for all of our laws. So it is not unnatural for Christian to be a part of the political sphere, the public square,” Vought continued without directly addressing his plans for a to implement a fascist theocracy complete with bans on birth control pills, in-vitro fertilization, surrogacy, sex education in schools, and no-fault divorce in a restored Trump Reich.

All of which Charlie Kirk calls a “controversy” because, even though they’re openly planning an all-out assault on individual freedoms, independent voters who may not take too kindly to such designs aren’t meant to be clued in on that. It’s a base thing only and the MSM should stick to reporting on Biden being old and how it’s his fault a Big Mac extra value meal costs $18 on Door Dash.

Presidential brother James “Billy Beer” Biden told House GOP investigators his brother Joe “has never had any involvement or any direct or indirect financial interest” in his business scams, according to an opening statement obtained by Axios’s Steve Neukam. Must be Ukrainian disinfo.

Dems in the New York State legislature are poised to go with the second-most brutal gerrymander they proposed over the last few years of back-and-forth over the goddamned maps, sources tell Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman. Last week the state redistricting commission had issued a map that just slightly dinged three Republicans, but the new old proposed map would be significantly more aggressive and put more seats in play, likely netting Dems at least three more.

A new Economist/YouGov survey finds Donald Trump Jr’s utterly trouncing Hunter Biden in favorability ratings, 36 to 24 percent among respondents. Even worse for Hunter is that the numbers are divided into very/somewhat favorable, with Don Jr scoring 16 percent and Hunter only 6.

And that’s about as newsworthy as this poll of 1,562 US Adults gets. If you must know however, Trump leads Biden 43 to 42 percent and Dems lead the GOP 43 to 41 percent on the generic ballot.

Gym Jordan isn’t having a great day after Alex Smirnov, his “informant” against the Bidens admitted he was compromised by Russian intelligence. Even funnier is the Huffington Post reports that a letter sent out by Gym and fellow dipshit James Comer requesting an interview with former State Department official Amos Hochstein sent out last week was resent on Tuesday with a paragraph referencing the “bribery” bullshit removed from it. Freaking assclowns.

The Biden Administration is considering taking executive action on the “border crisis” that Republicans won’t shut up about, making it more difficult to claim asylum and targeting more recently-arrived claimants for deportation, NBC News reports on something that will probably do nothing to stop Republicans from screaming that the border is open every chance they get.

“Make your best assumptions and predictions. The data is false and manipulated. The future is just one big dark cloud, with storms, and lightning. Heading right for us” – Top comment on “Breitbart Business Digest: The Economic Winter That Never Came,” posted Tuesday afternoon.

In it, Breitbart’s John Carney breaks the good bad news to fans with as much levity as he can muster, writing “Winter is no longer coming. The phrase ‘winter is coming’ is the motto of the Stark family in George RR Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series and the Game of Thrones television program it inspired. It is a warning of hard times ahead and the inevitable return of the long winters known in the fictional land of Westeros. Yet, in the realm of the Fed and monetary policy, the anticipated economic chill prompting rate cuts seems to be thawing before our very eyes.”

Which prompted a flurry of pretty pissed off responses in the comments like the one above. “Oops they must’ve forgot the $18 for a Big Mac value meal combo under Biden,” another Breitbarter wrote.

A Russian teenager was arrested on Friday, just hours after news broke of Alexei Navalny’s murder, over a molotov cocktail attack on a local office of dictator Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party the kid recorded on video while yelling “Freedom to Russia” and “It’s my choice” in a digitally altered voice, the Daily Beast reports citing Telegram channels which carried video of the attack.

The fire appears to have done little to no damage as it was confined to the roof of the building’s entrance. The kid has only been charged with “hooliganism” thus far, though that could change as the party itself said it is viewing the arson as an “act of terrorism” in response to Navalny’s murder.

It's official: I'm running for Congress in #NY01 because there's too much at stake for the country & community I love. Long Island families deserve someone who fights for their values, not Trump's. It's time for us all to get off the sidelines. Join Me. https://t.co/fMu8RdLyBL pic.twitter.com/RHWAam8yif

— John Avlon (@JohnAvlon) February 21, 2024