Category: Audio Posts: Selected Articles

Regardless of who is leading their governments, U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies maintain a quiet, steady relationship, as that link remains a vital part of national security for both countries.

During a talk last Thursday as part of a Harvard global youth conference on foreign affairs, former CIA director John Brennan and Tamir Pardo, former head of Mossad, spoke about the close ties between the CIA and Mossad, the far-reaching “nuclear” threat posed by cyber, and state-sponsored assassinations, which both generally condemn but view as defensible in the case of “terrorists” who pose an “imminent” threat.

“As good as CIA is, the world is a very, very big place, and we need to work with our partners, such as Israel and Mossad. They have eyes and ears in places and capabilities that we depend on. Because we can’t be everywhere, all the time, that information-sharing is important,” said Brennan, who served as CIA director during President Barack Obama’s second term, from 2013 to 2017. “Tamir and I would share the most sensitive intelligence because our agencies trusted one another.”

Even without the kind of network of global partners that many larger nations have, Israel manages to punch far above its weight in intelligence with the CIA as a partner.

“We managed to do things that no one thought before that can be done in cooperation between agencies like us,” said Pardo, who joined Mossad in 1980 and served as its head from 2011 to 2016. “We never thought that [we] would be able to achieve that degree of cooperation.”

Even though the two heads of state at the time, Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had a strained relationship at best, Pardo said “it never, never stopped the cooperation between the two agencies.”

The two former intel chiefs spoke as part of a three-day virtual conference hosted by the Harvard Undergraduate Foreign Policy Initiative last week. The event provided 615 high school and early college-age students in 62 countries, many of them thinking about future careers in foreign policy, an opportunity to hear from and speak directly to nearly 150 global figures and experts in intelligence, national security, and diplomacy. Speakers included Leon Panetta, former U.S. secretary of defense and former CIA director; Michèle Flournoy, former U.S. under secretary of defense for policy; and Henry Kissinger ’50, A.M. ’52, Ph.D. ’54, secretary of state and national security adviser during the Nixon and Ford administrations and an informal adviser to the Trump administration.

Moderator John Ferguson ’22 asked Brennan and Pardo about their views on state-sponsored assassinations, an ethical concern with which many students interested in the field of intelligence wrestle, he said.

Brennan said he “strongly condemn[ed]” the involvement of country, including the U.S., in assassination, an act he defined as the targeted killing of officials of sovereign countries for political or ideological reasons outside of wartime. He criticized the January 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani, a top general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which the Trump administration hailed as a major battlefield success. But Brennan said killing members of al-Qaida and other terrorist groups was “far different in my mind” than assassination because such groups were not sovereign nations and were plotting deadly attacks against the U.S. and others. “I do believe that there is an obligation on the part of governments to do what they can to protect the lives of their citizens.”

“Cyber is a very soft and silent nuclear weapon. You can destroy a country without shooting one bullet, without launching any rocket, and you can really create a lot of damage for a very cheap price.”

Tamir Pardo

Assassination is a criminal offense and “something that should never be done,” said Pardo.

But “if you have to do it, it is because you are in a state of war with that country or with that organization, and the threat … is enormous, and there is no other way to deal with it.”

“Israel never, never killed anyone for things that he did in the past,” he added, claiming that even terrorists who had caused harm at one point but were not presently a danger would not be targeted. “We are taking those actions only if there is imminent threat of this person for the coming days, for the future.”

Cyberintelligence has become a critical and higher-profile component of national security, as cyberattacks by groups inside Russia and elsewhere hit civilian targets like private companies and city governments, and disrupt economies and public safety. Once a tactic available only to state-run intelligence agencies, today virtually anyone, even criminals, can launch cyberattacks to inflict significant economic, social, and political harm.

“Cyber is a very soft and silent nuclear weapon. You can destroy a country without shooting one bullet, without launching any rocket, and you can really create a lot of damage for a very cheap price,” including the “exceptional power” to change government policies and administrations, said Pardo.

Asked by a student whether the greater reliance on data can restore public trust in the soundness of intelligence community decisions, Brennan and Pardo suggested that negative perceptions are being shaped by a torrent of false information online and in the news. “So, I think there is the basis for that distrust,” said Brennan.

Despite greater public awareness that state and non-state actors around the world are using the internet and other digital tools to manipulate people, “I don’t think the politicians and others and even news organizations have learned the lessons” from the last several years, said Brennan. “There seems to be a total absence of integrity, honesty, and truthfulness, which I think is leading … not just to distrust, but an ignorance of the facts and misunderstanding of world events. And, with the technological developments that are underway, I think we’re going to see more and more of this proliferation of false information, unfortunately.”

Less than a decade ago, telling truth from falsehoods was fairly easy. Today, it has become much harder to separate fact from fiction in both Israel and the U.S. in part because some politicians are deliberately misleading their citizenry, said Pardo.

During the Trump and Netanyahu administrations, “Fake news was so common that no one was able to [detect] the difference between truth and lie. I think it’s your job, the young people, to make the change — and it won’t be easy,” Pardo said, noting a new wave of younger politicians who have embraced and polished these tactics.

“We did our best to prevent it for many years. But we are out of the system today. It’s your turn now.”

Israel is widely recognized as having highly sophisticated intelligence capabilities, both in terms of its ability to collect information about potential threats within its own country and outside of it. And so as details unfold about the full extent of Hamas’ unprecedented and surprise attack on 20 Israeli towns and several army bases on Oct. 7, 2023, the question lingers: How did Israel fail to piece together clues about this large-scale and highly complex plot in advance?

Israeli intelligence did detect some suspicious activity on Hamas militant networks before the attack, The New York Times reported on Oct. 10, 2023. But the warning wasn’t acted upon or fully understood in its entirety – similar to what happened in the United States shortly before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

“Intelligence analysis is like putting a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle together from individual pieces of intelligence every day and trying to make judgments for policymakers to actually do something with those insights,” said Javed Ali, a counterterrorism and intelligence scholar who spent years working in U.S. intelligence.

We spoke with Ali to try to better understand how Israeli intelligence works and the potential gaps in the system that paved the way for the Hamas incursion.

1. What questions did you have as you watched the attacks unfold?

This took an enormous amount of deliberate and careful planning, and Hamas must have gone to great lengths to conceal the plotting from Israeli intelligence. This plotting may indeed have been hidden as the plot was being coordinated.

Because of the attack’s advanced features, I also thought that Iran almost certainly played a role in supporting the operation – although some U.S. officials have so far said they do not have intelligence evidence of that happening.

Finally, Hamas is on Israel’s doorstep. One would think Israel could better understand what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank, as opposed to 1,000 miles away in Iran. How did Israel not see something this advanced right next door? Some Israeli officials have said they believed Hamas was already deterred by recent Israeli counterterrorism operations, and that the group lacked the capability to launch an attack on the scope and scale of what occurred.

2. How does Israeli intelligence work, and how is it regarded internationally?

Israel has one of the most capable and sophisticated intelligence enterprises at the international level. The current design and functioning of Israel’s intelligence system broadly mirrors that in the U.S., with respect to roles and responsibilities.

In Israel, Shin Bet is the Israeli domestic security service, so the equivalent of the FBI, which monitors threats within the country. On the foreign security side, Israel has Mossad, which is equivalent to the CIA. Third, there is an Israeli military intelligence agency, similar to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency – and there are other, smaller organizations within military intelligence that are focused on different intelligence issues.

Like most Western countries, Israel relies on a combination of different intelligence sources. This includes recruiting people to provide intelligence agencies with the sensitive information they have direct access to, which is known as human intelligence – think spies. There is what is called signals intelligence, which can be different forms of electronic communications like phone calls, emails or texts that the Israelis gain access to. Then there is imagery intelligence, which could be a satellite, for example, that captures photos of, say, militant training camps or equipment.

A fourth kind of intelligence is open source, or publicly available information that is already out there for anyone to get, such as internet chat forums. While I was winding down my work in intelligence a few years ago, there was a shift to seeing much more publicly available intelligence than other kinds of traditional intelligence.

3. How does Israel’s intelligence system differ from the US system?

Unlike the U.S., one thing that Israel doesn’t have is an overall intelligence coordinator, a single representative who knows about and oversees all of the different intelligence components.

The U.S. system has a director of national intelligence position, who runs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which was created in 2004. These were both recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, after it found that the U.S. approach to intelligence was too fragmented across different agencies and offices.

So, when there are tough issues that no one agency could resolve on its own, or analytic differences in intelligence, you need an independent office of experts to help work through those issues. That’s what this office does.

I spent several years working within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. In one of my jobs there, I reported to the director of national intelligence.

There is no equivalent to that central office and function in Israel. In my opinion, Israel might consider down the road how a comprehensive intelligence coordinator could help avoid this challenge in the future.

4. What role does the US have in monitoring threats to Israel, if any?

The U.S. and Israel have a very strong intelligence relationship. That partnership is bilateral, meaning it is just between the two countries. It is not part of a larger international group of countries that share intelligence.

The U.S. also has a broader intelligence partnership, known as “Five Eyes,” with Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Nevertheless, the general rule in these strong bilateral relationships is that when one side picks up intelligence about threats to the other, it should automatically get passed on.

This may be a case where the U.S. is shifting its intelligence priorities to other parts of the world, like Ukraine, Russia and China. As a result, we may not have had significant intelligence on this particular Hamas plot, and so there was nothing to pass to Israel to warn them.

The widen war, in the Middle East, being provoked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, may very well decide who becomes America’s president next month. The current bombing of Lebanon, and the attacks on Iran, threaten to ignite the whole region into a catastrophic deadly war—that may lead to a second Donald Trump presidency.

Is this the October surprise strategy Netanyahu is employing—with President Joe Biden’s help—to kill Vice-President Kamala Harris’ chance of becoming the first female president?

That is clearly the outcome Netanyahu wants. But why is President Joe Biden helping the effort which may cause Harris the 2024 Presidential Election?

Ever since the “intelligence failure” on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed 1,195 Israelis and foreign nationals, Netanyahu has used that tragedy to benefit his political expediency. Facing criminal charges, in Israel, all-out war against Palestinians was a perfect distraction, like manna from heaven, for the embattled prime minister. The current war escalation into Lebanon is just a continuum of Netanyahu’s Machiavellian machinations to evade legal troubles in Israel.

The idea Netanyahu was working toward a peace-deal is pure fantasy. Also, many Israeli citizens reportedly want Trump to win too.

Since “birds of a feather flock together,” it is no surprise Netanyahu likes Trump. In fact, they are monstrous mirror images of one another. The irony here is while anyone who criticizes Israeli policy is smeared with the “anti-Semitic” charge, Netanyahu likes breaking bread with a racist like Trump. Then again, Netanyahu is a racist himself.

Given all this, it is hard to understand Biden’s thinking in dealing with Netanyahu—especially, since he is no longer running for reelection. Biden surely understands that Netanyahu does not want peace.

So, what is Biden’s game plan here? Why is he seemingly making Harris’ chances of becoming president more difficult? Why won’t he take a firm stance against Netanyahu?

For months now, it has been clear Muslim-Americans are understandably furious with the Biden Administration for doing nothing to stop the Gaza Genocide. For example, in the key battleground state of Michigan, we saw the emergence of the Uncommitted National Movement, which influenced many Muslim voters to seek other voting options during the 2024 Democratic presidential primaries.

To make matters worse, the Kamala Harris campaign’s decision not to have a single Palestinian voice at the Democratic National Convention wasn’t helpful. What message did this send to Palestinian-Americans, and to American Muslim voters generally, regarding the Democratic Party’s concerns for their humanity in the face of maniacal mass murder?

For all the good Biden has done, relative to other American presidents, the history books will now list him as an aider-and-abettor of Netanyahu’s genocidal crimes. From a political positioning point of view, Biden’s reticence to reign in Netanyahu was fathomable, though unethical, when he was still a reelection candidate—although his campaign was already losing support because of the arbitrary slaughter of innocent Gazans. But now that Kamala Harris is the candidate, Biden’s stance is puzzling.

This is why some are now surmising, shockingly, that Biden wants Harris to lose, because of the grievances he has with how he was forced out of the 2024 race. Before he was pressured to step aside, Biden was said to have doubted whether Harris could win the presidency. There have also been reports that Biden is complaining about being forgotten in the national conversation.

Meanwhile, over 41,000 thousand Palestinians have been bombed and blown to bits in Gaza. And over 2,000 Lebanese have been killed since Netanyahu perpetrated his latest acts of aggression.

If Biden continues to back Netanyahu’s war escalation in the Middle East, Kamala Harris will lose more Muslim, student, and anti-war votes. And the worse Netanyahu’s murderous impulses get before November 5 the more we are likely to see Trump again slithering into the White House.

A man accusing Sean ‘Diddy‘ Combs of assaulting him when he was just 16 has shared a photograph of the pair together at one of the rapper’s famous White Parties.

In a court filing lodged on Monday, the man known only as John Doe accused Diddy of assaulting him at the 1998 party, while celebrities mingled nearby.

‘There existed something sinister – a dark underbelly of crime, sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, bribery and prostitution,’ the court filing stated.

‘Combs is a menace to society, women and children.’ Diddy denies the allegations against him. 

The filing also posed a potential answer to the question of all the baby oil found in Diddy’s home after his arrest, noting there are ‘allegations of Combs dousing victims in lotions or similar body oils… laced with GBH, so that the drug would be absorbed through the victim’s skin and make it easier to assault him or her.’

Diddy’s White Parties were once considered the most sought after invitation on the social scene, and were attended by a constant stream of A-list stars.

According to the new filing by Tony Buzbee, who says he is representing as many as 120 credible Diddy victims, it was also central to his alleged offending.

‘[He] would tell victims, ”this is what it takes to be famous, what are you willing to do to become a star?’

John Doe was 16 and living in New York City when he received a highly sought after invitation to the 1998 White Party in the Hamptons.

When he received the invitation, he felt like he finally had the opportunity to rub shoulders with the who’s who of the industry. He thought it could be his chance to break into the music industry,’ the court filing read.

‘As John Doe entered, he spotted countless celebrities and A-listers who form the music and entertainment industry. He recognized faces he had seen on TV and on the big screen.’

The young boy was making his way through the crowd and heading toward the restroom when he ‘unexpectedly bumped into Combs,’ the filing states.

‘Shocked, John Doe found himself face to face with Combs, a titan in the music industry, standing right in front of him at his own party.’

The picture shared in the court filing was allegedly taken at this moment, during this interaction.

The filing states: ‘Combs took an interest in John Doe and wanted to talk to him. They walked to a more private area near the portable restrooms brought in for the party.

‘There, John Doe told Combs he was a big fan of Combs and shared his dreams of becoming a star. Combs smiled, telling him he had potential and ‘the look.’ When John Doe admitted his voice was not great, Combs assured him that did not matter.

‘Combs abruptly told John Doe that he needed to drop his pants.’

John Doe was allegedly caught ‘completely off guard’ by the request, and asked Diddy to repeat himself.

‘Combs made himself clear. He instructed John Doe to drop his pants and expose his penis so that Combs could inspect it, explaining it was a rite of passage and the route to becoming a star, and also as a way to prove himself. 

‘Out of fear, anxiety and the imbalanced power dynamic between himself and Combs, John Doe then dropped his pants and exposed his penis as Combs previously instructed.’

The filing states: ‘Combs moved closer and grabbed John Doe’s penis and genitals with his hand. He firmly cupped and held onto John Doe’s genitals for an extended period of time. 

‘During this time, Combs moved his hand in such a fashion to manipulate John Doe’s genitals, squeezing and feeling them. Doe was only sixteen.’

Buzbee has repeatedly stated more high-profile people could soon be named in suits and vowed to pursue the cases against any offender ‘aggressively’.

Of the 120 people he is now representing, 25 claim they were minors at the time they were allegedly abused. 

In the filing, Buzbee said Diddy was able to target young, vulnerable people ‘through a criminal enterprise built on his success as a rapper, record producer and record executive.

‘Combs is one of the wealthiest musical artists in the world. 

‘As part of his pattern of abuse, Combs manipulated both men and women to participate in highly-orchestrated performances of sexual activity with both commercial sex workers and unsuspecting partygoers.

‘Combs has a profound contempt for women and a desire to dominate both minors and other men. 

‘His conduct shows a longstanding practice of denigrating, defeating and attempting to humiliate men, women and children.’

Combs attorney’s issued a statement to <a href=”http://DailyMail.com” rel=”nofollow”>DailyMail.com</a>.

‘The press conference and 1-800 number that preceded today’s barrage of filings were clear attempts to garner publicity,’ they said.

‘Mr. Combs and his legal team have full confidence in the facts, their legal defenses, and the integrity of the judicial process. In court, the truth will prevail: that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone—adult or minor, man or woman.’

He was charged with a host of sex trafficking and racketeering offenses following his September 16 arrest. 

Last week, a judge scheduled his trial for May 2025.  

America’s official creed turned 61 on July 30. On that date in 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Public Law 851, resolving that “In God we trust” shall henceforth be the motto of the United States, even though the phrase had already begun to appear on U.S. currency almost a hundred years earlier. The chances of such an innovation happening today are slim to nil.

Few things are more controversial in America today than the subject of God-talk in the public square. The courts have thus far rejected First Amendment petitions to expunge the loaded language from our wallets, but only by positing that the God of the Treasury is a secular impostor. In 1984, Justice William Brennan invoked “ceremonial deism”—a dictum first conceived by Yale Law School dean Eugene Rostow—to suggest that references to the Divine on legal tender or in the Pledge of Allegiance should be “protected from Establishment Clause scrutiny chiefly because they have lost through rote repetition any significant religious content.”

For guardians of the U.S. Constitution, “Thou shalt preserve the separation between church and state” is the 11^th commandment. It ensures that no single religious tradition is given preference over all others, providing for all citizens to be treated equally before the law. America’s fidelity to this principle, however inspired, may have stunted its ability to fully fathom world events.

Here’s a news flash: God never left the Middle East. This isn’t to say that he’s deserted the United States, which—despite the growth of the “Nones”—remains in many ways a deeply religious land. But over in the Middle East, religion is intertwined profoundly with national identity. It’s not relegated to the realm of personal choice, a private matter seldom discussed in polite company, but a completely public affair. And turning the American model on its head, both synagogue and mosque are very much connected to the apparatus of state throughout the region.

The July 14 shooting on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where three Arab Israeli gunmen killed two Druze policemen, has ignited passions across the region. The site, which is under the control of Israel, is administered by the Islamic waqf (religious trust). The introduction of metal detectors to screen visitors for weapons—standard practice at venues around the world—was sufficient pretext for the Palestinian Authority to suspend security coordination with Israel.

The outbreak of nationalist violence at one of humanity’s most sacred shrines—home to both ancient Jewish temples and the present-day Haram al-Sharif mosque—has once again focused global attention on the tangible and explosive nexus between faith and politics. Nothing could better epitomize the volatility of mixing sanctity with earthly dominion.

In the Middle East, loyalty to country—a relative term where borders have proven fluid historically—continues to play second fiddle to deeper spiritual ties. We’re not talking about some perfunctory expression of tribal solidarity either. A 2012 Pew Research Center survey found that a staggering 97 percent of the world’s Muslims subscribe to the shahadah, according to which “there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.” (Pointedly, the poll excluded North America and Western Europe.) And 93 percent of them observe the daytime fast throughout the holy month of Ramadan.

Meanwhile, in Israel, where 93 percent of Jews profess to taking pride in their Jewish identity, a plurality of them describe themselves as Jewish first and Israeli second. Notwithstanding a robust debate about whether “being Jewish” is foremost a religious or national attribute, the facts speak for themselves: at least 90 percent of Israeli Jews claimed that it was “important” or “very important” for them to circumcise their male infants, celebrate a bar mitzvah, and say the kaddish mourning prayer for their parents. Just over three quarters (76 percent) of them maintain the dietary laws of kashrut in their homes. These levels of ritual performance vastly outpace comparable figures for their co-religionists in the United States.

But personal observance is only half the story. In the United States, questions of devotion and praxis are confined largely to domestic affairs. Access to abortions, school prayer, and discrimination against the LGBT community are typical examples of this. To the God-fearing masses of the Middle East, where religion and state have a symbiotic relationship, they are also a core driver of foreign policy, impacting forcefully on the security and economics of the entire planet.

President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, have been engaged in trying to broker a ceasefire in Syria. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson just recently returned from a failed round of shuttle diplomacy in the Persian Gulf, where he attempted to conciliate a Saudi-led consortium of four Arab states and their rival in Qatar; his two envoys have just arrived in the region to pick up where he left off. And the tenuous nuclear deal with Iran remains under administration review. At the heart of all these Middle Eastern conflicts lies a civilizational struggle for primacy between opposing versions of Islam.

In Syria, Iraq, Yemen and other quarters of the region, the Islamic Republic of Iran (note the official appellation) employs its assets and proxies to promote its vision: exporting the Islamic Revolution. Employing their own form of “replacement theology,” its leaders aim to expand the influence of their Shi‘a brand at the expense of Mecca-centered Sunni Islam. Geopolitically, through the deployment of Hizballah in Syria and Lebanon, and its de facto alliance with Moscow, Tehran supports this objective by maneuvering to keep Bashar Assad in power and preserve its beachhead on the Mediterranean. Riyadh and its Sunni allies are pushing back, not only against Iran, but also against its satellites; thus, their bitter resistance to Qatari sponsorship of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Al-Jazeera network, which threaten to undermine their regimes and ideology. This power struggle over which doctrinal interpretation will prevail will define the future of the Arab world. The demands it places on the resources and bandwidth of the United States and its Western allies are enormous.

No less consequential is Muslim hostility toward the Jewish state of Israel, whose security repeated U.S. administrations have pledged to uphold. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran—a nation once friendly with Israel—has called for the destruction of Israel, allegedly based on “well-established Islamic principles.” Saudi textbooks have branded Jews as “apes” and “swine,” and Qatar’s largest mosque hosted a sermon calling for Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque to be saved from “the claws of the Jews;” they’ve had no kind words for Christians either. Israel has found common cause with a number of Sunni Muslim states in opposing Iranian expansionism, but contagious racial sentiments continue to incite fundamentalist violence against Western targets.

Israel, meanwhile, is awash in religious discord of another sort. Recent government decisions concerning prayer arrangements at the Western Wall and religious conversion standards have sparked divisions between Judaism’s different denominations. The fallout has unleashed talk within the U.S. Jewish community of possible repercussions that could affect Israel’s standing abroad. If steadfast friends of Israel in the United States were ever to withhold their support, it could potentially trigger changes in congressional voting patterns on issues such as foreign aid.

The devil, if you’ll allow me to mix metaphors, is in the heavenly details. Belief is not simply a quaint feature of the human condition but a complex operating system that holds the key to understanding the Middle East. If diplomats and other professionals involved in international affairs are to be effective, they need to get up to speed. Cross-cultural literacy, the bread-and-butter of navigating relationships, implies more than just a bemused, superficial understanding of religious customs; it’s about engaging in reflective dialogue, not just knowing whose hand you’re allowed to shake and when. Never before has it been so important that practitioners develop a nuanced appreciation of religious canons and motivations. In too many cases, these are the powers behind the true game of thrones.

Six new accusers of Sean “Diddy” Combs have filed lawsuits against the music mogul, alleging rape, sexual abuse and sexual assault.

Two Jane Does and four John Does filed civil lawsuits against Combs, 54, in New York on Monday, marking the first accusers of 120 alleged victims with claims against Combs, which Texas-based lawyer Tony Buzbee announced earlier this month.

The cases include alleged incidents from 1995 through 2021, including the alleged sexual assault of a minor and multiple allegations of rape. Several of the assaults are alleged to have occurred at the infamous parties that Combs became known for throughout his three decades in the music industry.

The lawsuits name Combs’ various businesses as defendants. One of the men, who accuses Combs of sexually assaulting him in a Macy’s in 2008, lists the department store as a defendant, and one of the women, who says Combs raped her in a hotel, lists Marriott as a defendant. USA TODAY has reached out to Macy’s, Marriott and Combs’ reps for comment.

If you mute Diddy songs,what about his hits with Mary J. Blige, Mariah, JLo and more?

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

Buzbee revealed in an Oct. 1 press conference that he is representing the 120 accusers, with allegations of “violent sexual assault or rape,” “facilitated sex with a controlled substance,” “dissemination of video recordings” and “sexual abuse of minors” against the embattled businessman, among other offenses.

“We will expose the enablers who enabled this conduct behind closed doors,” Buzbee said at the time. “We will pursue this matter no matter who the evidence implicates.”

Buzbee added: “It’s a long list already, but because of the nature of this case, we are going to make damn sure that we’re right before we do that. But the names that we’re going to name … are names that will shock you.”

Combs has denied all allegations brought against him. An attorney for Combs previously said in a statement, “No matter how many lawsuits are filed it won’t change the fact that Mr. Combs has never sexually assaulted or sex trafficked anyone. We live in a world where anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason and without any proof. Fortunately, a fair and impartial judicial process exists to find the truth and Mr. Combs is confident he will prevail against these and other baseless claims in court.”

This new wave of legal action follows Combs’ September arrest and subsequent arraignment for sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution charges; he is set to face a criminal trial May 5. The rapper, who has maintained his innocence amid an avalanche of civil lawsuits filed over the past year alleging decades of sexual and physical abuse, remains in custody at the Special Housing Unit at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs allegedly raped woman at NY hotel

One Jane Doe accuses Combs of raping her in a Manhattan Marriott hotel room in 2004 when she was 19 years old.

The accuser says she initially met Combs at a photoshoot, where the rapper invited her and her friend to his hotel for an exclusive party. At the hotel, Jane Doe says a man “grabbed” her and her friend and brought them to a bedroom, telling them, “You know what you are here for.”

In the bedroom, the door to which was locked, Combs allegedly became “aggressive” with the two women and “eventually began forcibly touch them without consent,” the lawsuit says. He then allegedly ordered the accuser’s friend to perform oral sex on him “or else he would have them both killed.”

Combs also forced Jane Doe to take her clothes off under the threat of violence and “fondled, molested, and ultimately raped Ms. Doe, all while she was begging him to stop,” the suit alleges.

Diddy, multiple men raped unnamed man at 2021 party, lawsuit says

One man claims he was drugged and assaulted by Combs and multiple other unnamed men at a 2021 party.

The John Doe’s lawsuit says he “became disoriented” after consuming an alcoholic drink at the party in New York, and while in a state of confusion and trying to leave, he heard a male voice saying “hold on” and promising to help him. The accuser then remembers being in a bedroom, unable to move or speak.

“Multiple men began to sexually assault him through sodomy and other forced acts,” the lawsuit says. “He distinctly recalls seeing Combs above him, naked, at one point during the assault,” and he “was sodomized by at least three men.”

Sean John, Ecko feud was backdrop of sexual assault, unnamed man alleges

In another lawsuit, a man claims he was sexually assaulted by Diddy in a Macy’s store in New York in 2008.

The man says he worked as an advisor for the clothing line Ecko Clothing, a competitor of Combs’ Sean John clothing line. He alleges he was in the stockroom at a Macy’s in Manhattan in 2008 when Combs and three bodyguards entered.

After turning a corner in the stockroom, the John Doe “was hit hard around the base of the neck, possibly with a pistol,” the lawsuit says, which forced him “to his hands and knees” where “he saw that each of the bodyguards had guns in their waistbands. (John Doe) heard multiple voices call out things like ‘I’ll kill you.'”

Combs then allegedly approached the man while he was on his hands and knees and “proceeded to forcefully, and brutally, orally rape” him for at least two minutes while making derogatory comments.

“After he was finished, Combs threw (John Doe’s) head aside and said words to the effect of ‘shut up or I’ll kill you,'” the lawsuit says.

Security guard claims drugging, sexual assault at Diddy party

Yet another John Doe alleges Combs sexually assaulted him at a party in 2006.

The man says he was working for a security firm at the time and accepted a job at a Combs “white party” in East Hampton. He says he “began to feel extremely ill” at the party after consuming two alcoholic drinks that were provided to him by Combs.

As the man was disoriented, he claims Combs “forcibly pushed” him into an open van, held him down and sexually assaulted him.

Biggie Smalls music video party was site of alleged rape, lawsuit claims

In another lawsuit, a woman says she attended a promotional party in New York in 1995 for the Biggie Smalls music video “One More Chance,” where Combs approached her and asked to speak with her. When they were alone in a bathroom, he “unexpectedly began kissing” her, she says.

When she tried to pull away, the woman alleges Combs “violently struck her, slamming her head against the wall and causing her to fall to the floor.” He then allegedly hit her again, lifted her dress and raped her. After the assault, Combs allegedly threatened the woman by warning, “You better not tell anyone about this, or you will disappear.”

Unnamed male minor claims he was assaulted at Diddy White Party

Another accuser says he was 16 years old when he was sexually assaulted by Combs at a Hamptons “white party” in 1998.

At the party, the man alleges Combs instructed him to “drop his pants and expose his penis so that Combs could inspect it,” claiming this is a “rite of passage and the route to becoming a star.” Combs then allegedly grabbed the man’s genitals.

“As a result of Combs’ sexual assault onto John Doe while he was a minor, John Doe experienced damages including pain and suffering, mental anguish, physical impairment and emotional torment,” the lawsuit says. “The interaction continues to humiliate and cause shame on John Doe.”

This story has been updated to include additional information.

Contributing: Anika Reed, Jay Stahl and Edward Segarra

The armed rallygoer accused of plotting a possible third assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump is a self-described MAGA supporter and registered Republican who once tried, but failed, to launch a political career in Nevada.

Details about Vem Miller’s background are emerging after the 49-year-old was taken into custody on weapons charges after he was stopped at a security checkpoint at Trump’s Coachella Valley rally Saturday.

Local authorities say they believe they thwarted yet another assassination attempt against the Republican presidential nominee after Miller was allegedly busted with loaded firearms, multiple passports and a fake license plate.

But Miller, who has since been released on $5,000 bail, slammed the accusations as “bulls–t.”

Here’s what we know so far about Miller in the wake of his arrest:

What is his political affiliation?

Miller, who is a Las Vegas resident, is a registered Republican — and proudly calls himself a supporter “all in” on Trump.

“Yes, I’m 100% a Trump supporter,” he told Fox News Digital as he rebutted the claim from authorities that he planned to kill the 45th president.

“This is a man that I deeply admire.”

After his arrest this weekend, local cops accused Miller of being part of a so-called sovereign citizens movement — a far-right collective built on conspiracy theories that say governments have no authority over them.

Miller denied that in interviews, even telling Fox News he doesn’t “think there’s such a thing.”

“Government is an inanimate object, it’s the individuals within government that matter, so no, I’m not a part of any of that,” Miller said.

“They’re saying that I’m part of these right-wing anti-government groups? Why aren’t they naming these groups? Because it doesn’t exist.”

What is his background?

Miller is a film and TV industry professional who has long railed against the US government and mainstream media, according to his LinkedIn profile.

“For 20 years +, I have been working in the media as an investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker, and a content producer … I have seen our rights be taken, while the power of big government grows,” his bio on the work-focused site states.

“I have seen small businesses and the middle class be squashed. I have seen unlawful mandates and politicians acting like dictators. I have also seen how the power of the money flows through politics and a political class that no longer works for We The People.”

In 2022, he created the American Happens Network — with the motto “Rage against the mainstream media” — which plays host to his politically aligned podcast called “Blood Money.”

The podcast focuses on “corruption, controversy and conspiracy — topics the Mainstream media will not touch,” according to its website.

Miller also holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, in English and creative writing, his LinkedIn shows.

His failed political bid

Miller ran as a GOP candidate for state assembly in Nevada in 2022 — but ultimately lost the primary.

At the time, he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal he was running for office because “this country has been taken over by tyranny.”

He had vowed to focus on alleged voter fraud and would work on strengthening voter ID laws and reimplementing paper ballots.

He also told the outlet that he supported increased electric car manufacturing in his state, as well as solar energy.

What happened at the Trump rally?

Miller was stopped by sheriff’s deputies at a security checkpoint outside the rally around 5 p.m. local time Saturday, authorities said.

He had allegedly tried to enter the rally with a phony press pass.

Cops searched his black SUV after realizing the vehicle was unregistered and discovered a cache of fake passports and driver’s licenses, along with a shotgun, a loaded handgun and a high-capacity magazine, officials said.

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said in the aftermath that he “truly” believed his department halted an assassination attempt, though he acknowledged it was “speculation.”

“What his frame of mind was, all we can do is speculate,” Bianco said. “If you’re asking me right now, I probably did have deputies that prevented the third assassination attempt.”

Neither the Secret Service nor the FBI has said the incident was a planned assassination attempt.

What was he charged with?

Miller was hit with charges of possession of a loaded firearm and a high-capacity magazine, both misdemeanors.

He was subsequently released on $5,000 bail. 

No federal charges have been filed.

What has the suspect said about the allegations?

A “shocked” Miller quickly slammed his arrest, as well as the sheriff’s claim he was plotting to assassinate Trump, as “bulls–t.”

“These accusations are complete bulls–t,” Miller told the Southern California News Group. “I’m an artist, I’m the last person that would cause any violence and harm to anybody.”

Miller, who insisted he was unaware of the different gun laws between Nevada and California, said he was invited to the rally by the head of the Clark County GOP — and was wearing a Trump shirt and hat when he ran into authorities at the checkpoint.

He claimed in an interview with Fox News that he brought in the weapons for personal protection because of death threats he’s received since launching his America Happens Network.

“I always travel around with my firearms in the back of my truck,” he told the outlet, adding that he has “never” shot a gun in his life.

Miller also denied the sheriff’s claim he had a stash of fake passports on him.

“None of those are fake,” he said, adding that he is Armenian and has documents that show his full Armenian name and ones that don’t.

For decades, we have heard about and often ignored “the Silent Majority.” Time and again, Republican leaders have predicted that this seemingly mythical phenomenon was going to come to the fore and save the country from destructive Democratic policies.

At least in terms of the popular vote, that mythical creature has mostly remained in stealth mode, as the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections.

Of course, our presidents are elected via the Electoral College, so the popular vote is not the final say. For the most part, the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote by crushing it in major cities and along the East and West coasts. Map-wise, most of the United States is still red.

For this election, I believe a new phenomenon is going to drive the vote for the Republicans and most especially for former President Donald Trump: the “scared majority” vote, which will actually show up at the polls.

I grew up in abject poverty as a child, and most of my contacts to this day are those in the working class or lower. While the entrenched elites from politics, academia, the C-suites, Hollywood and the media who live in bubbles of luxury and protection won’t notice, those Americans have never been more scared in their lives. Not only about their future, but about their present.

Those I speak with on a regular basis tell me they have never been so frightened about circumstances out of their control. Circumstances they believe were deliberately and politically exacerbated by the Democrats and most especially by the Biden-Harris administration.

There is something going on. These times do not feel like the others for the working class. They feel much more foreboding.

There are now so many “canaries in the coal mine” on this issue that they need to take a number to chirp out the first warning.

The first is that the Democratic Party used to be the party of the poor and disenfranchised. Now it is the party of uber-wealthy tech and big-pharma barons and power-hungry special interests.

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted last week: “Paycheck-to-paycheck voters were once the rank and file of the Democratic Party. Now they are abandoning it, and with good reason.” We also have this recent headline from Newsweek: “I Raised Millions for Democrats. At the DNC, I Realized They’re the Party of the Rich.”

“Here’s the sad truth,” the author correctly states in the piece. “The Democratic Party has lost its way entirely. They mostly speak to the college educated, the urban and affluent, in their language. Their tone is condescending and paternalistic. They peddle giveaways to the college-educated like student loan forgiveness plans that disproportionately help their base, snubbing the majority of the country without a four-year degree, and then offer no tangible plans for true reform.”

Well, guess what? The “majority of the country” is not stupid. In fact, to survive as a working-class and disenfranchised voter, you actually have to be quite smart. Tens of millions of these Americans not only do understand the political games being played but realize that it is they who are paying the highest price.

The next “canary in the coal mine” is the International Brotherhood of Teamsters non-endorsement endorsement of Donald Trump. For the first time in over 20 years, the Teamsters did not endorse the Democratic candidate. Instead, their leadership chose to endorse no one.

Why? Because that leadership was shocked to find that almost 60 percent of its rank-and-file membership — those would be fearful working-class Americans — have indicated they are going to vote for Trump over Harris. What is noteworthy here is that when Biden was still in the race, Trump was actually trailing him, 44 percent to 36 percent. As with the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, the more Americans see of Harris, the less they like her or trust her.

That goes double when they realize that Harris refuses to do real interviews or hold an unscripted press conference. Those I speak with also raise the fear that she is hiding something while being controlled by others.

Next, we come to the “canary” reported by CBS News. Correspondent Adriana Diaz admitted that, while in swing-state Nevada, she could only find “one person” in each restaurant she visited who planned to vote for Harris, while the rest were “really excited” about Trump. This, she said, after “leaving no stone unturned” to find any Harris supporters.

These times are different. The fear is building. During that segment, voters expressed a fear of the failing economy, fear of crime, fear of out-of-control illegal immigration and fear of a world on fire. “Fear” is the dominant emotion.

Speaking of immigration, we have this bit of insulting double-speak from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell blaming the massive influx of illegal immigrants for the rising unemployment rate. Said Powell: “If you’re having millions of people come into the labor force, then — and you’re creating 100,000 jobs — you’re going to see unemployment go up.”

I’ve got news for Chairman Powell: The tens of millions of “scared” voters are more than smart enough to realize those “millions of people” coming into the labor force did not let themselves into our nation. These working-class American citizens know those illegal immigrants were released into the country by the Biden-Harris administration.

Fear is real. Fear does motivate. Working-class Americans do fear that elite-enabling liberal policies beyond their control are robbing them of their quality of life now and well into their futures.

But many of these Americans have also realized that there is one way to combat that fear and regain some of that control by voting.

I predict that there is a reckoning coming in November from those tens of millions of scared voters. And I suspect that reckoning is going to produce a landslide victory for Trump.

Douglas MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official.