Badlands Brief
Criminal Probes, Spy Surges, & Humiliation Rituals
The Badlands Brief is your daily drop of Badlands’ takes on the narratives dominating the info war. Read on, and join the conversation in the comments section.
FBI Opened Criminal Probe into Trump as Alleged Russian Agent After Comey Firing
The White House Government Transparency Task Force released newly declassified documents Wednesday exposing an FBI criminal investigation code-named Oxferd Comma.
The records show the FBI opened a full investigation on May 16, 2017, targeting President Trump on the theory that he may have been acting, wittingly or unwittingly, as a Russian agent when he fired FBI Director James Comey, according to reporting from John Solomon Tuesday.
The probe alleged Trump could be involved in activities on behalf of the Russian government that violated federal law or threatened national security. It also examined whether he obstructed the FBI’s work. Acting Director Andrew McCabe advised Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on the opening of the probe.
At the time the case was launched, FBI agents had already debunked the Steele dossier, cleared Michael Flynn of collusion, and been told Carter Page was a CIA asset. Lead agent Pete Strzok texted that there was “no big there there.” Another lead agent, William Barnett, concluded there was no evidence of Russian collusion and wanted off the case, calling it a bad game of Clue.
Despite that, the FBI still opened Oxferd Comma and used it as part of the push to appoint Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Rosenstein, who knew the real reason Comey was fired involved mishandling the Clinton email case, allowed the probe to proceed and authorized Mueller.
The case was closed on April 9, 2019, shortly after Mueller’s report, with no charges against Trump. The task force also released a stack of prior evidence that contradicted the investigation’s original basis.
AND
Kash Patel Forges New FBI Partnerships with China and Russia on Transnational Crime
FBI Director Kash Patel says he has built new law enforcement partnerships with China and Russia over the past year to combat transnational crime, including fentanyl trafficking, cyber fraud, and child sexual exploitation.
The arrangements involve personnel exchanges, with Chinese officials visiting the US and FBI agents traveling to China to work joint cases and share intelligence. The two sides have also conducted joint raids and arrests.
The current relationship began with President Trump’s visit to China in May 2025 and was followed by two trips by Patel. Cooperation now spans four working groups: cyber fraud, violent crimes against children, counternarcotics, and a fugitive task force.
Chinese officers visit US FBI facilities every month, and American agents also travel to China. “They are speaking with us daily, which has also never happened before,” Patel said.
Months of behind-the-scenes collaboration with Russia have targeted violent criminal networks. “This stuff doesn’t happen overnight,” Patel said. “We’ve been at this for 15 months.”
Patel said the same approach could be used with other non-traditional partners. “The fact that we did it with China, when everyone said, ‘Don’t do it,’ and, ‘You can’t do it,’ shows what we can do with almost anyone.”
Burning Bright: Well if this isn’t one of the best one-two punch headers I’ve seen in some time ...
First up, while it’s admittedly not my forte, we’re getting new disclosures out of the John Solomon-assisted White House Government Transparency Task Force, and as much as the cynic I keep buried deep inside wants to crap on some of this stuff as stuff we’ve known for a decade (literally,) that’s never been the point, either from a public relations or legal perspective.
Getting this stuff into the public record, including what essentially amounts to the betrayal (and I do mean that in the constitutional sense of the word) of US Intel Agencies on the US Presidency, and by extension the American people is an inarguable positive on two major levels:
First, it renders what we BELIEVED to be true verifiably true (at least to the Normie layers) by the very agencies who spent said decade saying it was not.
Second, and more importantly, in my estimation, it implies that whatever information is contained in said disclosure packets is no longer needed for presentation to Grand Juries and for (novel) use in the sort of Grand Rico Conspiracy we’ve been salivating over (and that Solomon has been promising) for, again, a decade.
Of course, ALL of this is predicated on whether or not you believe there WILL be Grand Conspiracy Charges brought. Some see these disclosures as evidence to the contrary, but I’m taking the contrarian stance on that until proven otherwise.
More signal-soaked than Solomon’s latest disclosures, however is what the CURRENT FBI is up to, and if recent meetings (one occurred and one announced for next month) between FBI Director Kash Patel and his Chinese and Russian counterparts weren’t enough already, this week, we have Patel’s FBI announcing unprecedented intelligence-sharing and law enforcement partnerships between the US and both Russia and China.
Now, I know this audience (at least, those of you who believe in my Sovereign Alliance theory) aren’t shocked by this development that is itself a disclosure, in my estimation, but think about how it looks to the Normie layers, and more importantly, think about how it looks to the very intel apparatus Stateside that’s currently being blitzed by a series of disclosures that reveal their effort to tie Donald Trump and his allies to ... Russian intelligence!
Guys. This is a humiliation ritual.
And it might be the biggest proof yet of my long-running ‘joke’ that has never been a joke:
Russia Collusion was real ... and it was a good thing.
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Senate to Vote on Holding Fauci in Contempt Thursday, Leading to Potential Jail Time
A Senate committee — the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Rand Paul — is expected to vote Thursday on a resolution to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress. The resolution stems from Fauci’s refusal to answer questions during a July 29 hearing, where he invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times; Paul had ruled that the privilege didn’t apply given Fauci’s prior pardon and had directed him to answer.
If the committee approves the resolution, it would direct Vice President JD Vance, in his role as Senate president, to certify the report and refer it to the US Attorney for the District of Columbia. Paul has suggested he may send the referral directly to the Department of Justice rather than bringing it to a full Senate floor vote, which would require 60 votes to pass.
Approval by the committee would not automatically result in jail time or criminal charges. Any prosecution would still require the US Attorney’s office to pursue an indictment through a federal grand jury, and prosecutors would need to establish that Fauci’s refusal to answer was willful and that his Fifth Amendment claim was legally insufficient — an argument complicated by the pardon issue and one that legal experts say could face a genuine fight in court.
Ashe in America: The illegitimate Congress is voting to hold Fauci in contempt of their proceedings, and Rand Paul is Lucy holding the football again.
We are all Charlie Brown.
There are some interesting indicators. Legal analysts, even the ones of CNN, are showing signs of anxiety that Fauci may actually be in trouble. Brian and I debated the pardon and its impact on Fauci’s Fifth Amendment on Daily yesterday, and Brian thinks Fauci will eventually be forced to testify and answer questions before the Congress.
Then there is the fact that Rand Paul has indicated that he may make a referral to DOJ for prosecution directly out of Committee, bypassing a vote of the full Senate. That could make things move more quickly.
At the end of the day, we don’t want Fauci to be prosecuted for contempt of Congress only. But the contempt drama could be setting up the proceedings to challenge the validity of the illegitimate pardons, with Fauci going first.
I hope he is forced to publicly answer all those questions he was asked in the community theater we watched last week, but more than that, I hope Fauci is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and, when convicted, punished as severely as is allowable.
They held a dress rehearsal for deploying a world wide crisis.
President Trump was right: There’s never been an attack like this.
There must be accountability.
Some Reports on US-Iran Deal Claim Iran Will Emerge More Powerful Than Before the War
Oman has put forward a proposal, backed by several Gulf states, for joint management of the Strait of Hormuz — modeled on the Strait of Malacca system, where transiting vessels voluntarily fund navigation and safety operations. The plan is designed specifically so that Iran does not end up with sole or greater control over the waterway than it had before the war.
Iran rejected that proposal as insufficient. Tehran has instead floated its own counterproposal, which Iranian officials say would give Iran more control over the strait than the Oman plan allows. As of now, the two sides are still exchanging competing drafts, with no agreed framework in place.
Separately, a broader postwar US-Iran framework has been under negotiation since a June ceasefire agreement. That track pairs limits on Iran’s nuclear program — including its enrichment stockpile — with phased sanctions relief and access to frozen assets. It’s a distinct, wider negotiation from the narrower Hormuz shipping dispute, though the two are related.
Neither Washington nor Tehran has confirmed final terms on either track, and multiple outlets have reported differing versions of the drafts in circulation.
GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: I write this now after writing the novel of a take below. I think I’m finally beginning to understand the factions at play, and why President Trump and certain elements of the Iranian government have been engaging in this goofy, memetic exchange.
This is like the “rope-a-dope” technique that Mohammed Ali developed to defeat George Foreman in “The Rumble in The Jungle” 1974 heavyweight championship boxing match.
Ali intentionally allowed Foreman to exhaust himself by throwing ineffective blows against the ropes, a tactic that appeared to leave Ali battered but actually drained Foreman’s stamina. Once Foreman was weakened, Ali launched a decisive counter-attack, resulting in an eighth-round knockout and reclaiming the heavyweight title. (The term was popularized by Ali after photographer George Kalinsky suggested he act like a "dope on the ropes" during training.)
So who is George Foreman in this analogy? The remaining elements of the IRGC? The Israeli government? The Chabad-Lubavitch? The Zionist/Diaspora elite? The Republican Establishment? The State Department? The CIA? Mossad? MI6? Five Eyes? The FBI? The Pentagon? Lloyds of London? Credit Suisse? The City of London? The entire insurance industry? The entire western central banking system? The entire western corporate media apparatus? The energy cartels? The tech oligarchs?
How about “All the above, and more.”?
Accelerate.
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Judge Drops Remaining Oath Keepers Charges in Jan. 6 Case
A federal judge in Washington on Tuesday dismissed all remaining charges against Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and eight co-defendants in the January 6 Capitol case.
The Justice Department asked the court to throw out the indictment after President Trump’s clemency actions. Most January 6 defendants received full pardons; these nine had their sentences cut to time already served.
Judge Amit Mehta granted the request, calling the government’s reasons substantial enough under the rules that give prosecutors wide discretion to drop cases. He noted the defendants had already faced two full trials, and no further punishment was possible after the commutations.
Mehta wrote that this was the last of the major January 6 prosecutions and that dismissing the charges “diminishes the gravity of that day, denigrates the work of the prosecutors and law enforcement officers who secured these convictions, and excuses criminal acts that caused a centuries-long pillar of our democracy, the peaceful transfer of presidential power, to buckle.”
Still, he said the court could not “write a different ending.”
Ashe in America: Judge Amit Mehta was one of the greatest villains of the January 6th persecution story, and he’s a prime candidate for impeachable judges. Of course, that field of candidates is crowded.
Mehta wasn’t happy about this, and he made that clear, but there is nothing he can do unless he wants to prosecute the case himself, which he probably does, but can’t,
It’s satisfying to see this villain forced to choke it down and sign for the end of the January 6 criminal story. Now that the fake persecutions are finished, perhaps we can get to actual truth and justice for what happened on January 6. Because it was a set up, and admissions are still being made, and we can’t have a golden age without a justice phase.
How’s Yogananda Pittman doing out in Nancy Pelosi’s district after allegedly sabotaging Capitol intelligence before, during, and after the events of January 6?
The criminal story has ended for these defendants; for the organizers of the false flag, here’s hoping it’s just beginning.
Israel Claims it Will Scale Back Strikes to Give Trump’s Plan a Chance
Israeli officials say they’ve tightened restrictions on strikes in Gaza after Trump’s Gaza envoy, Nickolay Mladenov, requested a two-week pause to give negotiations over Hamas’s disarmament room to proceed. The shift follows a period of intensified Israeli strikes in early August that killed dozens and drew accusations from Hamas that Israel was undermining the ceasefire process — officials say the new restraint is meant to keep Israel visibly aligned with Trump’s “Board of Peace” framework.
The plan itself centers on a phased disarmament of Hamas, with Israeli forces withdrawing as heavy weapons and infrastructure are decommissioned, an International Stabilization Force and retrained Palestinian police assuming security duties, and eventual governance by a technocratic Palestinian administration. Unresolved issues also include the return of roughly two dozen deceased hostages’ remains still held in Gaza. All living hostages were released in October 2025.
A senior Israeli official said the strike pause doesn’t grant Hamas immunity; anyone targeting Israeli troops would still be hit. Netanyahu has said Israel won’t withdraw from its current positions until Hamas is fully disarmed, and Hamas has not accepted this phase of the plan — the core dispute remains over sequencing, with Israel wanting disarmament first and Hamas wanting a halt to strikes and withdrawal first.
GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: Can we really believe anything that Israel says at this point? Their word is meaningless. They have lost the ability to negotiate because, as President Trump wrote in his most famous book, once people can’t trust your word you can never be a dealmaker.
Rather than give you another extensive take to read, I would implore you to read my take below on the Iranian hardliners.
Iranian Hardliners Create Fake News Scandal In Attempt To Undermine President Pezeshkian
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has denied reports that he repeatedly threatened to resign amid disagreements within Iran’s leadership, while later acknowledging that his interactions with Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei are currently difficult.
Pezeshkian said in a televised interview that he would formally announce any resignation and said he intended to remain in office. He also said his government was fully coordinated with Iran’s military forces.
The comments followed claims by cleric Mohammad Bagher Kharrazi, who is related by marriage to Khamenei’s family. Kharrazi claimed the supreme leader had warned Pezeshkian that another resignation attempt would be accepted. Khamenei’s office subsequently rejected the account as false.
On Wednesday, Pezeshkian said in an interview aired on Iranian state television that interaction with Khamenei was currently “very difficult.”
The dispute comes as Iranian officials debate negotiations involving the Strait of Hormuz. Pezeshkian said Sunday that Iran should seek to make the United States adhere to a memorandum of understanding negotiated in June. The following day, Iran’s Assembly of Experts criticized prospects for an agreement with Washington, calling hopes for an agreement or understanding “futile.”
GhostofBasedPatrickHenry: Wow, I just stumbled down an amazing rabbit hole.
It appears that Iranian hardliners with ties to Paris and London, and also family ties to the Ayatollah, are attempting to undermine the efforts of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to negotiate a deal with President Trump by disseminating fake news headlines through shady online publications. Their goal appears to be to install former IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaei as president. (This is my own working theory, so bear with me as I lay it out.)
From what I can discern, Rezaei has been one of the reported hardliners who refuses to negotiate with President Trump and doesn’t want to see any deal made on the Strait of Hormuz. If I were to guess, Rezaei would be one of the “evil twin” actors that President Trump is rope-a-doping with his rhetoric, working in in concert with Araghchi and Pezeshkian.
Mohsen Rezaei was appointed as the first long-term commander of the IRGC in 1981 by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Prior to this appointment, the position was held temporarily by three officials, including the Ayatollah himself. The first guy held it for 25 days; then the Ayatollah held it for 92 days; then another held it for 16 months; Rezaei was then appointed and remained the commander for 16 years, until 1997 when he became the Secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council, which was established to mediate disputes between the Iranian Parliament and the Guardian Council—the 12-member council that acts as the Pretorian Guard of the Ayatollah.
What’s interesting is that when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (aka the guy that Mossad wanted to install as leader after the war) became president in 2005, he elevated the Expediency Discernment Council, granting them some of the Ayatollah’s executive powers that gave them supervising authority over all branches of government.
Remember Ahmadinejad? Iran’s most controversial president? The guy who was almost a cartoon character version of how Zionists describe Iranian leadership? He openly denied the Holocaust in speeches at the UN and said he wanted to erase Israel from existence, and for some reason, [now former] Mossad Director David Barnea recruited him to be their Manchurian Candidate that they would install as leader after overthrowing the current government this year.
Why would Barnea recruit a guy like Ahmadinejad to be their puppet president? Probably for the same reason that I have long speculated that Barnea was appointed to run all ops against the late IRGC commander, Qasem Soleimani: Because both Soleimani and Ahmadinejad likely were working for Mossad from the beginning.
Think about it: The two figures who are most notorious for giving Iran a “radical zealot” reputation both have direct ties to David Barnea? Who is appointed by Netanyahu to become Mossad Director in 2021? A year after Soleimani is killed in a US military strike and the same year that Mohsen Rezaei ends his 24-year stint as Secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council? The same council that Ahmadinejad elevated in 2005 to effectively control the entire Iranian government? And now Barnea wants to install Ahmadinejad as Iranian president? (Did I also mention that it was Barnea who called President Trump on January 2nd, 2020 to inform him that Israel was backing out of the Soleimani strike operation?)
Did I just crack the Iran puzzle? Because I feel like I just cracked the Iran puzzle.
Throughout his time as Secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council, Mohsen Rezaei attempts to run for president a number of times, but fails. I’m now wondering if Rezaei had something to do with the untimely death of President Ibrahim Raisi, who defeated Rezaei in the 2021 election, and then died while in office in a helicopter crash in May 2024.
Let’s now tie it all together:
The resignation rumors of President Pezeshkian is a persistent psyop that has been ongoing since early 2025. Here is an AI-provided overview of the number of times the rumors have been published in Iranian media.
Strange that we are told that Iranian media is all strictly state-run, yet they are able to publish unfounded rumors about the president over and over without real consequence.
The most recent rumor comes from a man named Mohammad-Bagher Kharrazi, who is related by marriage to both the current and former Ayatollahs. (His sister is married to the current “gay” Ayatollah’s brother.) Despite being the brother-in-law to the current Ayatollah, Kharrazi confesses that he hasn’t actually seen or spoken to him since he became Ayatollah— which is also what President Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Araghchi have said—yet Kharrazi insists that the Ayatollah wants Pezeshkian to resign.
Who is Kharrazi? He is a hardliner mullah (religious elite) who is known for his over-the-top political rhetoric, like threatening Turkey with suicide bombings in the 2000’s, or calling for the Iranian government to annex Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. Kharrazi is the leader of a very small minority political group known as the “Iranian Hezbollah,” which has no connection whatsoever to the more infamous Lebanese group of the same name.
The rumored statement from Kharrazi was published in an outlet called Tabnak, which has long claimed in their own literature to be backed by… Mohsen Rezaei.
In his statement, Kharrazi calls for Pezeshkian (spelled “Mezikian” in Farsi translation) to resign and be replaced as president by… Mohsen Rezaei.
(Forgive the terrible Farsi-English translation)
Citing the wishes of the Ayatollah and his family, Kharrazi also called for a “changing” of the Supreme National Security Council (the group responsible for implementing Devolution last August), and the resignation of its current leader, Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, who replaced Ali Larijani in March after Larijani was reportedly killed in an airstrike at a military parade. (Larijani was responsible for implementing Devolution, and the official who disclosed it in a public statement.)
It is worth noting that both Pezeshkian and the Ayatollah’s offices dismissed Kharrazi’s statements as fake news. It is also worth noting that Kharrazi has some ties to both Paris (where the original Ayatollah lived prior to his ascent to the throne) and the City of London, as does Mohsen Rezaei.
Kharrazi’s brother, Sadegh, was the Iranian ambassador to France from 2002-2006, meaning he lived in Paris during that time. To his credit, he played a central role in crafting what was known as the “Swiss Memo” (aka “the Grand Bargain”) in 2003, which was a list of concessions that Iran was willing to make in exchange for normalization with the US. The document was delivered to the State Department by Swiss diplomat Tim Guldimann, and enraged hardliners in Tehran, and I would guess, DC. The State Department reportedly didn’t take the document seriously because it wasn’t printed with an official letterhead or seal. It is said that the Ayatollah agreed with 90% of the concessions the document offered.
Kharrazi’s uncle, Kamal, has significant ties to London. He was the founder o the Islamic Research Institute in London in 1960, originally a research division of the Pakistani government and became a chartered Islamic university in 1985. (It sounds like it as Kamal was responsible for getting this charter.) Kamal became a teaching fellow at the University of Houston in 1975, where he received his doctorate in “industrial psychology,” which is as ominous as it sounds.
During the first months of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Kamal served as the Vice-President of Iranian National Television and was largely responsible for controlling the media that came out of the country at the time. In 1980, he was appointed as the President of the Islamic Republic News Agency, a role that he held until 1989, and when the Iran-Iraq War broke out that year, Kamal headed the War Information Headquarter and served as the military spokesman for the entire eight-year war.
In 2006, the Ayatollah created a think-tank called the Foreign Relations Steering Council—later known as the Strategic Council on Foreign Relations—appointing Kamal as its Chairman.
In September 2022, the Ayatollah appointed Kamal to the Expediency Discernment Council—which Mohsen Rezaei had left the year before—on which he remained until he was killed in an airstrike in April 2026.
Not only was Kamal Kharrazi deeply involved in psychological warfare operations—on which he was trained in the US and London—it is safe to say that he was very much the pysop leader of the Islamic Republic during the first decade of the Ayatollah’s rule. Now his crazy hardliner nephew is trying to psyop the public into believing that the new Ayatollah doesn’t want Pezeshkian in office, or this deal with President Trump, and the Zionist MSM in the West has been helping to spread his message.
Clearly there is a power struggle of sorts in Iran, though it seems that the Deep State element is unable to stop the Sovereign Alliance actors from leading the country forward. It also appears that President Trump has been aiding the “good twin” by taking out specific actors working for the “evil twin.”
BONUS ITEMS
US Ramps Up Spies in Cuba as Trump Admin Pushes Regime Change
The United States has stepped up its intelligence presence in Cuba in recent months, aiming to force the communist regime to reform or collapse, according to two people familiar with the Trump administration’s plans.
One source said the US has recently sent spies and other assets to the island. A second described it as increasing the CIA’s “presence.” Both declined to give numbers or agency details to avoid compromising operations.
President Trump still prefers diplomacy to achieve the goal, though the administration plans to use every conventional tool, including intelligence resources, to pressure Cuba’s leaders. One source noted that “Iran doesn’t need to be solved before we go there” and called Cuba a “huge priority” for Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
In May, CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Cuba to warn the regime it must make fundamental reforms. Days later the Justice Department charged former Cuban President Raul Castro in connection with the 1996 deaths of four people who were trying to rescue Cuban exiles at sea.
Rubio has signaled he is running out of patience after the regime largely resisted US demands for major economic and political changes.
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There are many who need to held accountable -- from Fauci to Mehta to Boasberg and more. I want to believe we are in the beginning stages of the justice phase -- the public face of the justice phase. May the punishments be equal to the crimes. Gen Pop in Angola comes to mind. I know that vengeance and justice is up to God. And His ways are far better and more fitting than mine.
Iran -- I wonder if we will ever really know what is going on. But there are many countries who can and should step up and step in to help rein in that government.
More and more I am coming to like Rubio. I'm not saying I trust him, but I am seeing more about him to like. Gut instinct? Did he see the light? Did he finally realize that what is happening in this administration IS the way government should be running? Or getting to the point of running? I like him more than JD right now, that's for sure. I'm not calling anyone an heir apparent, but I do like him. And Bessent. I am coming around on Bessent as well.
"...and Rand Paul is Lucy holding the football again.
We are all Charlie Brown."
Best. Comment. Ever! Thank you, Ashe!