First launched back in 2008, the OCCRP maintains an extravagant $21 million budget and a team of 200 journalists worldwide. It also has more than 70 media partners, including The New York Times, Deer Spiegel (Germany) and The Guardian.

The world’s leading investigative journalists are almost all tied to the OCCRP in some way. The group is credited for its contributions to major journalistic endeavors such as The Panama Papers and the Pegasus Project.

Mediapart headed up the probe into who really controls the OCCRP. Since its inception, the OCCRP has taken in $47 million from U.S. state sources – and all that money came from U.S. taxpayers. Those same state sources steer the group’s investigations, including country-specific investigations in controversial places like Russia and Venezuela.

“I’m very grateful to the U.S. government,” commented Drew Sullivan, the OCCRP’s co-founder and publisher, in a statement to German state broadcaster NDR confirming that Washington, D.C., is the group’s largest donor, as are USAID and various federal agencies.

(Related: Remember when the corporate-controlled media went nuts following Donald Trump’s initial announcement about running for president in 2016?)

NDR suspends relationship with OCCRP following internal investigation

NDR, by the way, launched its own investigation in the OCCRP last year that resulted in the media outlet cutting ties with the organization over the disturbing revelations that were uncovered.

Without funding from the U.S. government, the OCCRP would not be able to operate as it currently does. If that money came without restrictions, it would be honest and right, but unfortunately it comes with restrictions.

According to reports, the U.S. government has the right to veto key personnel at the OCCRP, including Sullivan himself. The U.S. government is in charge, in other words, not Sullivan or any other individual. Washington also requires the OCCRP to use its funds to construct and publish hit pieces on targeted countries.

One example is the $2.2 million that the OCCRP recently took in to work on “Balancing the Russian media sphere.” Another $2.3 million was funneled to the OCCRP to investigate corruption in Cyprus and Malta for the purpose of using it against Moscow.

The OCCRP’s judicial investigations, sanctions and lobbying activities have all been weaponized by the U.S. government. In 2016, a group called the Global Anti-Corruption Consortium (GACC) was launched to force the OCCRP to push for sanctions and legal attacks on countries and individuals that Washington deems as “corrupt.”

“We’re proud that […] the U.S. government is the first public donor to OCCRP,” said USAID’s Mike Henning, revealing that the U.S. government’s funding of the OCCRP is strategic for manipulation purposes. “Funding must be aligned with and advance United States foreign policy and economic interests.”

Mediapart says the relationship the U.S. government has with the OCCRP is deceptive because it “makes the U.S. seem virtuous and allows them to set the agenda of what is defined as corruption.” In other words, the OCCRP produces propaganda on behalf of Washington in exchange for funding.

“It is just another front for the CIA,” a commenter suggested about the OCCRP. “We can just ignore whatever nonsense that they publish. Simple.”

“Who investigates the investigators?” asked another, making a very poignant point about the situation.

“Wherever U.S. funding is found, you can pretty much bet the bank on it that the recipient is under their control,” added another.

The U.S. deep state has its hands in seemingly everything. Learn more at Corruption.news.

Sources for this article include:

• RT.com
• NaturalNews.com

John Strand seems to agree for the most part. The former political prisoner who is still getting hounded over his actions on January 6 posted on 𝕏 on Sunday declaring that we need to stop referring to some of the protesters as “non-violent.”

As he noted:

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:

Please, if you truly care about truth, justice, and the plight of innocent J6 defendants unjustly suffering unspeakable horrors,

STOP SAYING “NON-VIOLENT”

Allow me to explain: the Merrick Garland/Matthew Graves DOJ is corrupt—they lied, manipulated evidence, and conducted an enormous fraud to falsely smear many protesters as “violent” when those protesters had no such intention.

*MOST* of the “violence” alleged by the DOJ is either bogus, and/or self-defensive reactions to conflict that was initiated and exacerbated by police brutality and the government’s truly violent abuse of use-of-force protocols—they killed four unarmed protesters that day alone, for starters.

There *will* be legitimate criteria for determining who was a bad faith actor, necessitating further legal scrutiny in the course of granting a proclamation-style “Pardon of Innocence”…but the assertion of “violence” is irredeemably tainted, and it does not honestly apply to the vast majority of J6 defendants.

This is not a small point—it is CRUCIAL to navigating the path through a deadly swamp of DOJ corruption in order to reach true justice.

We MUST carefully articulate this in the course of achieving EXONERATION for those truly innocent J6 victims, which they deserve and which our nation must deliver.

cc: @VivekGRamaswamy @BrandonStraka @julie_kelly2 @MattGaetz

Let’s bring them home and make this right #JusticeForJ6

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:

Please, if you truly care about truth, justice, and the plight of innocent J6 defendants unjustly suffering unspeakable horrors,

STOP SAYING “NON-VIOLENT”

Allow me to explain: the Merrick Garland/Matthew Graves DOJ is corrupt—they lied, manipulated…

— John Strand (@JohnStrandUSA) December 8, 2024

The vast majority in attendance at the rally in Washington DC on January 6, 2021, were there to express their concerns over an election that was clearly fraudulent. They were doing their duty to defend the Constitution and were calling on lawmakers to make a horrible situation right.

By no means am I defending every action taken by everyone at the event. Some clearly took their protests too far. But the hammer of justice was lowered on as many of them as the corrupt Department of Justice and our activist judiciary could wrangle. The event should be classified as a false flag to entrap as many passionate Trump supporters as possible.

This is why it should be a blanket pardon. It seems very likely that if the Deep State psyop that was orchestrated that day had not occurred, the entire event would have remained peaceful. Even the few who took it too far would have been restrained by the other legitimate protesters.

As M. Dowling noted at Independent Sentinel:

President-elect Donald Trump said he is looking to issue pardons to his supporters involved in the attacks on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as soon as his first day in office, saying those incarcerated are “living in hell.”

Trump’s comments, the most sweeping he’s made since winning the 2024 election, came during an exclusive interview with “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker.

The event was designed to not only entrap protesters but to act as an example to those who would engage in their constitutional right to protest in the future. That alone should be the righteous sentiment that expedites pardons for all who were involved.

Kash Patel will have the power to release documents and present evidence that would implicate thousands of powerful or connected people. From the Epstein list to the Russiagate inquiry to the classified J6 truth, people in and out of DC will be in grave jeopardy.

They are going after him now. They have to. If he’s allowed to control the vast powers of the FBI and access the insane amount of “dirt” they have in their vaults, then many Deep State collaborators will be exposed.

Their first recourse will be to try to turn him through blackmail. They will dig through his past, his family’s history, his finances, and anything else they can access. If would be their ideal scenario to have someone in there who is perceived as a “good guy” by the people but who they actually have compromised and now control.

If they can’t blackmail him, they will get very desperate. This is the part that I hesitate to spell out but it needs to be said if only ambiguously. Will they manufacture dirt to discredit him? Possibly. It wouldn’t be shocking to see a sex scandal of some sort pop up if they can find another Christine Blasey Ford.

Will they engage in activities that are far worse? Possibly. They tried to smear, jail, and assassinate a presidential candidate. It seems like nothing is off the table when the Deep State gets desperate enough.

This is an extremely important position and the right man was chosen for the job. We have to hope they cannot compromise him in any way. Then, we must hope that they don’t do something far worse.

He has indicated he wants the release of the Epstein client list. We can assume the same is true for the Diddy party list.

He has said he wants full transparency about the FBI’s involvement in sparking the J6 protests. That has been one of the best kept secrets in Washington for four years with multiple Deep State assets bending over backwards to keep us in the dark.

The Nashville Shooter’s manifesto is currently being withheld from the public by Christopher Wray and his successor wants it released.

As for RussiaGate, he has mentioned over 10,000 man-hours were put into exposing the abuse of power committed by so many members of government, oftentimes against other members of government. He says this information has been largely withheld and that he wants it all released.

Perhaps worst of all for the Deep State, he says he wants to make FBI agents actually go out there and enforce the law. They have operated largely as the government’s jackboots for so long that taking them out of the intimidation industry and making them fight crime would upend many of the Deep State’s machinations.

We must pray for him. He needs God’s protection from all of the shenanigans they are going to try to use against him because the forces behind them are desperate. They know what he can do as FBI Director and it gravely concerns them, so they’ll be willing to do anything just as they were willing to do anything to stop President Trump.

God protected Trump and we must hope and pray it is God’s Will to protect Kash Patel as well.

The first unhinged attack they’ve launched against him is to say he’s unqualified. This is a joke. One can argue he’s more qualified than any previous FBI Director for the past three decades.

Trump advisor Alex Bruesewitz took to 𝕏 to highlight Patel’s qualifications:

Kash Patel is arguably the MOST qualified FBI Director nominee in history… Here’s his background:

• Kash served as the Chief of Staff to the Department of Defense (DoD) and Deputy Assistant to President Trump. As the Chief of Staff at DoD, his responsibilities included implementing the Secretary’s no fail mission with our 3 million plus employees, operating a $740 billion budget, and $2 trillion in assets.
• Kash served as Deputy Director of National Intelligence where he oversaw all 17
  Intelligence Community (IC) agencies, and prioritized intelligence collection to focus on hard targets and global threats. He led the Director’s mission to synthesize our intelligence holdings and create the President’s Daily Briefing, which he then briefed to the President and cabinet officials.
• Kash led President Trump’s counterterrorism mission as Deputy Assistant to the President on the National Security Council (NSC) and helped President Trump’s on his top priorities including eliminating Al-Qa’ida and ISIS senior leadership, and safely repatriating dozens of American hostages. As the top counterterrorism official at the White House, Kash was responsible for creating and implementing our nation’s policy to safeguard the homeland by overseeing the interagency implementation of the national CT strategy.
• Kash served as the National Security Advisor and Senior Counsel for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) where he spearheaded the investigation into the Russian active measures campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election (Russia Gate). The investigation discovered numerous illegal surveillance measures undertaken by the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to unlawfully spy on the Trump campaign. Concurrently, he led congressional oversight of sensitive programs for the IC and U.S. Special Operations Forces and worked to enact legislation to fully fund the multi-billion-dollar budgets supporting intelligence and counterterrorism operations worldwide.
• Kash worked as a National Security Prosecutor at the DOJ under the Obama Administration where he led investigations spanning multiple theaters of conflict and oversaw the successful prosecution of criminals aligned with Al-Qaida, ISIS, and other terror groups. This work necessitated Mr. Patel’s presence in locations across the globe, collaborating with host nation governments to successfully prosecute terrorists. He also served as the DOJ Liaison Officer to Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), working with our nation’s most prestigious counterterrorism units (special forces) to conduct collaborative global targeting operations against high value objectives, in almost every theater of war.
• Kash began his career as a Public Defender, trying scores of complex cases in federal and state courts, ranging from murder to narco-trafficking, to complex financial crimes.

Kash is exactly who we need to get the FBI back on track!

As I noted in reply, it goes well beyond his qualifications. The guy’s a patriot and a disruptor. That makes him dangerous to the various bad guys in and out of government.

Kash Patel’s qualifications are impressive.

His character is unimpeachable.

His loyalty is to America and the Constitution.

This is why the Deep State will go after him harder than they’ve gone after any of President Trump’s other appointments.

Kash Patel represents a paradigm shift in what has been the Deep State’s most reliable domestic tool.

They don’t just fear him for what he’ll do. They despise him for what he represents.

It’s not hyperbole to say Kash Patel may prove to be President Trump’s most consequential appointment.

Kash Patel's qualifications are impressive.

His character is unimpeachable.

His loyalty is to America and the Constitution.

This is why the Deep State will go after him harder than they've gone after any of President Trump's other appointments.

Kash Patel represents a…

— JD Rucker (@JDRucker) December 1, 2024

The UniParty Swamp will bring every excuse they can find to try to prevent him from taking over the FBI. Anyone on the Republican side of the Senate who votes against him is hiding something.

Any Republican Senator who votes against confirming Kash Patel is either covering for someone else such as their Deep State handlers, or they're concerned about their own crimes coming out.

Looking at you, Mitch McConnell.

— JD Rucker (@JDRucker) December 1, 2024

America stands with Kash Patel because Kash Patel stands with America.

After his first election, President Trump arrived in D.C. with Republican majorities in Congress, too.  He expected that the people who had promised to repeal Obamacare for seven years would have a legislative package ready for him to sign into law.  He expected that Republicans who had campaigned on securing the border for four decades would be prepared to do what it takes to achieve that goal for the American people.  His expectations were met with the disappointing reality of squishy Republican backbones and Uniparty backstabbing.

While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell informed President Trump which of his potential nominees would get Republican support (McConnell’s wife, for instance, would have no problem winning confirmation), House Speaker Paul Ryan told him that there was just no money to build a border wall (because Ryan had already spent trillions supporting Barack Obama’s policy agenda).  Both Republicans took turns publicly laughing at Trump for arriving in D.C. with the misguided belief that the work of government could be anything other than slow.  McConnell and Ryan wasted most of President Trump’s first year in office bickering about how best to dismantle Obamacare before finally throwing up their hands in feigned exasperation after Senator John McCain saved the Democrats’ costly expansion of government-directed medicine with his final “screw you” vote.

On the other hand, McConnell and Ryan took the Russia collusion hoax very seriously.  Although Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Brennan, Jim Comey, and numerous other coup-plotters inside the Intelligence Community had created that fantasy as a mechanism for illegally spying on candidate Trump before his election and as a mechanism for overthrowing President Trump after his inauguration, congressional Republicans treated the matter as if it deserved their utmost attention.  McConnell and Ryan both knew that the allegations against Trump were ridiculous, but they eagerly assisted Democrats in their efforts to paint the president as a Russian spy.  Why?  Because holding Trump’s fate in their hands gave them power over his presidency.

President Trump entered office in 2017 beholden to no one.  No secret billionaires had funded his campaign.  No foreign governments had secretly supported his run for office.  Unlike other politicians who are easily controlled once the Intelligence Community digs up enough dirt from their pasts, President Trump has never had a problem showing the public exactly who he is.  How do you manipulate a man who has few secrets and whose peccadilloes are already widely known?  You make him “Putin’s puppet” and enlist Republican leaders to legitimize the farcical intelligence operation.  With “friends” like McConnell and Ryan, President Trump was surrounded by enemies.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, you can play that phony card only once.  There will not be another round of Uniparty and Intelligence Community hijinks engineered to divide the American people and stifle the MAGA agenda.  The “news” organizations that ran Russia collusion stories for years have exposed themselves as mere propagandists for the State.  The credibility of the media, Intelligence Community, FBI, DOJ, and Uniparty lies in tatters.  The “Trump Train” has left the station, and it’s picking up speed.

Heads must roll.  People who fabricated the Russia collusion hoax must pay a price.  Because nobody ever suffered for inflicting this fraud upon the American people, the worst offenders just continued offending.  We got the fake quid-pro-quo Ukraine impeachment (which was designed to cover up real quid-pro-quo crimes of the Biden Crime Family and other powerful political-crime families in D.C. that rake in a great deal of money from foreign regimes).  We got the J6 psy-op in which demonstrators protesting for free and fair elections were condemned as “insurrectionists.”  We got the unending lawfare from Democrat prosecutors and Merrick Garland’s Department of (in)Justice designed to imprison Trump, his friends, and his voters.  These crimes against the American people will not stop until the perpetrators are brought to justice.  Conspirators, fraudsters, and government employees who used their offices to persecute innocent Americans for their political beliefs must be held accountable.

While President Trump and his new administration sort through the nest of vipers in D.C., they will keep the guilty preoccupied.  It is difficult to respond to the president’s constant moves when you’re spending fifteen hundred dollars an hour on legal representation.  Expect President Trump to show Establishment Republicans just how much can be accomplished in Washington when the overarching command is simple: Let’s get s— done.

Illegal immigration, inflation, crime, economic malaise, bureaucratic regulation, “woke” indoctrination, censorship, and the growing likelihood of WWIII are the consequential issues that broadened and strengthened President Trump’s MAGA coalition in 2024.  Americans feel that their country is vulnerable and in decline.  They overwhelmingly believe that their country is on the wrong track.  They are desperate for the federal government to take their worries seriously.  With their votes, they have spoken loudly.  President Trump has been given a mandate to execute on his policy initiatives and to prove to the American people that their voices have been heard.

President Trump will give the Deep State a magic show.  As is his wont, he will move fast, change directions, and keep his opponents off guard.  He will juggle numerous balls in the air and still surprise his adversaries with a rabbit from under his hat.  Pay attention.

President Trump is serious about mass deportations.  The American people cannot be made to feel unsafe in their own communities.  Expect to see the Obama-Biden handouts for illegal aliens come to an end.  Expect to see violent criminals rounded up.  Expect to see border security reactivated.  Expect to see the completion of a border wall.  And expect international cartels currently in control of the U.S. border to be designated as terrorist organizations.  The old way of doing things is over.  Those who have been destroying America with fentanyl, human-trafficking, and organized crime have no place to hide.  Their days are numbered.

Bureaucratic regulations operate like hidden taxes that increase the cost of necessary purchases, such as food and fuel.  When agencies issue new rules, they steal liberty from the American people and empower themselves with additional authorities.  Expect President Trump to send in the equivalent of several Special Operations Forces to wage war on the administrative state.  Their mission is to slash red tape, battle the bureaucratic Leviathan, liberate markets from undue restraints, and return freedom to the American people.

Expect President Trump to return to tariffs as his preferred tool for battling international foes while increasing economic opportunities for America’s middle class.  Wall Street hates tariffs because multinational companies do not benefit from “America First” policies.  Main Street, however, benefits greatly.  When the cost of doing business overseas is greater than the cost of producing goods in America, domestic manufacturing rises.  When foreign regimes respond with their own tariffs, it becomes more expensive for American-produced food and energy to be exported.  Those supplies stay home, and domestic prices decrease.  Expect President Trump to accomplish through deregulation and tariffs something that the “experts” say is impossible: deflation in the United States.

President Trump sees America’s natural resources and the American people’s unmatched ingenuity as the country’s greatest weapons.  He will unleash domestic productivity and, by doing so, use the nation’s economic strengths as both sword and shield against foreign enemies.  The rabbit under his hat is the prospect of global peace.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr. CC BY-SA 2.0.

If he is going to have as successful of a second term as possible, weakening or destroying the Deep State early will be imperative. They will do everything in their immense power to subvert his administration, just as they did during his first term. He must stop them before they’re able to stop him.

THE END OF THE DEEP STATE: President Trump’s Plan to Dismantle the Deep State and Return Power to the American People. Here's my plan to dismantle the deep state and reclaim our democracy from Washington corruption once and for all, and corruption it is.

First, I will… pic.twitter.com/lKmWvR1wr6

— Truth Justice (@SpartaJustice) November 7, 2024

Here’s a transcript:

Here’s my plan to dismantle the deep state and reclaim our democracy from Washington corruption once and for all, and corruption it is.

First, I will immediately re-issue my 2020 Executive Order restoring the President’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats. And I will wield that power very aggressively.

Second, we will clean out all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus, and there are plenty of them. The departments and agencies that have been weaponized will be completely overhauled so that faceless bureaucrats will never again be able to target and persecute conservatives, Christians, or the left’s political enemies, which they’re doing now at a level that nobody can believe even possible.

Third, we will totally reform FISA courts which are so corrupt that the judges seemingly do not care when they are lied to in warrant applications. So many judges have seen so many applications that they know were wrong, or at least they must have known. They do nothing about it, they’re lied to.

Fourth, to expose the hoaxes and abuses of power that have been tearing our country apart, we will establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to declassify and publish all documents on Deep State spying, censorship, and corruption, and there are plenty of them.

Fifth, we will launch a major crackdown on government leakers who collude with the fake news to deliberately weave false narratives and to subvert our government and our democracy. When possible, we will press criminal charges.

Sixth, we will make every Inspector General’s Office independent and physically separated from the departments they oversee so they do not become the protectors of the Deep State.

Seventh, I will ask Congress to establish an independent auditing system to continually monitor our intelligence agencies to ensure they are not spying on our citizens or running disinformation campaigns against the American people, or that they are not spying on someone’s campaign like they spied on my campaign.

Eighth, we will continue the effort launched by the Trump administration to move parts of the sprawling federal bureaucracy to new locations outside the Washington Swamp. Just as I moved the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado, as many as 100,000 government positions can be moved out. And I mean immediately out of Washington to places filled with patriots who love America, and they really do love America.

Ninth, I will work to ban federal bureaucrats from taking jobs at the companies they deal with and that they regulate. So they deal with these companies and they regulate these companies and then they want to take jobs from these companies. Doesn’t work that way—such a public display cannot go on and it’s taking place all the time, like with Big Pharma.

Finally, I will push a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress.

This is how I will shatter the deep state and restore government that is controlled by the people and for the people.

Thank you very much.