Hovering behind the leadership bids, and once in office the policy units, of both Liz Truss and Boris Johnson has been the shadowy lobbying and PR conglomerate, CT Group, run by the Australian right wing political strategist, Sir Lynton Crosby (the knighthood was bestowed by a grateful Cameron after Crosby managed his 2015 election win).

The latest shenanigans within the Conservative party have highlighted troubling aspects as to how this outfit operates and how it appears to disguise apparent conflicts by operating at arms length from target politicians simply through swapping official roles and companies.

Examples appear to be the distancing of clients connected to the group that include former Tory leadership candidate Nadhim Zahawi and also Fathi Bashagha a Libyan rebel politician who is seeking to overthrow the elected government which has been recognised internationally and by the United Nations.

Both these individuals have featured in the recent re-packaging of CT Group’s founding former partner, Mark Fullbrook, who has operated as an independent consultancy over the past tumultuous months of Conservative government where both CT Group and Fullbrook have been at the helm of rival leadership campaigns.

During the earlier Brexit turmoil CT Group emerged as key backers of Boris Johnson having supported his previous mayoral campaigns funded by donors such as party treasurer Jonathan (now Lord) Marland and the billionaire Reuben brothers from Russia.

Fullbrook had claimed to have taken a sabbatical from his job at CT Group and worked for free with colleagues, including Isaac Levido and David Canzini, on Boris Johnson’s successful Conservative leadership campaign. Both Levido and then Canzini later joined the government as Downing Street advisors to Boris Johnson.

At the end of March this year Fullbrook then quietly left the CT Group partnership he had presided over since 2012, severing his directorships with a swathe of global subsidiaries of the firm.

This was shortly after the Department of Justice and FBI had started making enquiries into the group’s involvement in a Puerto Rico election where the election services of the firm had been allegedly offered as a bribe to the sitting governor as an incentive to block investigations into an offshore bank (a story broken by Sarawak Report). Fullbrook had been the point man on the contract.

By April Fullbrook had set up Fullbrook Strategies as a apparent rival to his old company. However, notably, his former partner Lynton Crosby was on the advisory board as was the Australian billionaire and Tory donor, Michael Hintze, known to be a close ally of Crosby.

In this capacity Fullbrook began to service the leadership campaign for the wealthy businessman MP Nadhim Zahawi, Secretary of State for Education and briefly Chancellor under Boris Johnson. According to reports, it was Fullbrook who advised Zahawi (the second richest member of the cabinet) on his brutal strategy to first take the Chancellorship following the resignation of Rishi Sunak (the richest) and then to almost immediately resign himself, precipitating Johnson from Downing Street (Zahawi has now declared himself a Johnson backer in the repeat contest).

All this period CT Group itself, and particularly Lynton Crosby, continued to act as close advisors to Boris Johnson as he strove to cling to office, raising concerns that the separation of these once close knit partners owed more to the desire to ride rival horses in the same race as the Boris government imploded than a genuine business split.

That concern strengthened when Zahawi crashed from the race to be replaced as a front-runner by Liz Truss, who immediately inherited Fullbrook as her campaign strategist, together with David Canzini and another CT Group veteran Reuben Solomon (who had secretly run a mysteriously funded pro-Brexit campaign on social media during the 2016 referendum whilst working for CT Group, before moving to act as the Conservative party’s online media strategist for the next two years).

Following her victory all thee of these ex-CT Group personnel acquired policy posts in Downing Street, along with other Fullbrook Strategy employees who included the wife of Jake Berry, Truss’ newly appointed Conservative party chairman (whom she has knighted). Fullbrook became the new Downing Street Chief of Staff.

By this means, observers have noted, personnel until recently associated CT Group maintained an inner seat in government despite the change of prime minister. Observers also note that Truss was herself supported by Boris Johnson to be his successor. Former close ally Dominic Cummings indicated at the time that Johnson did so on the grounds that she was an insane ideologue – “human hand grenade”/ “mad as a box of snakes” – who would soon create havoc and thereby open a path for his return.

Cummings publicly suggested this was the plan before Truss indeed proved herself to be an incompetent ideologue, created havoc and opened a path for Johnson’s’s return. Mr Cummings tweeted July 20th:

“Why is the [trolley emoji – meaning Boris Johnson ] supporting the supporting the human hand grenade [ Liz Truss ]?

“Cos [trolley emoji] knows she’s mad & thinks she’ll blow & he can make a comeback… He knows she is mad as a box of snakes and is thinking ‘there is a chance she blows, there’s another contest and I can return’.

Continuing to support Johnson, should he be successful, are Lynton Crosby and major donors such as the disgraced Lord Cruddas (whom Johnson ennobled in the face of opposition by the House of Lords Appointment Committee) who has been whipping up support for a ‘Bring Back Boris’ campaign amongst party members since the day he was forced out.

The Daily Mail editor, Paul Dacre, heavily campaigned together with other pro-Johnson media to promote Truss as a credible candidate during the leadership election, before the paper rounded on her mistakes. He is known to be on Boris’s planned resignation honours list, as revealed by a CT Group advisory paper to the former prime minister, again revealed by Sarawak Report.

Why is it so important for CT Group to back the winning candidate in a British leadership election, one might ask, given that the vast majority of its earnings come not from political clients but from a swathe of corporate interest, foreign powers and wealthy individuals? Crosby in fact funded Boris’s election campaign and not the other way around.

The answer might appear to be that CT Group’s value as a lobbying, PR strategist and political influencer on behalf of its major clients comes, above all, from that inside seat in government where former CT Group employees ensconce themselves as advisors at the side of the politicians they helped campaign for.

There are few rules against this revolving door for lobby group personnel and likewise few rules of disclosure. Hence, when it emerged in the past days that Mark Fullbrook retains a 10% shareholding in CT Group it was announced that what rules there are had been satisfied since these undisclosed interests had been put in a managed ‘trust’.

Thus, it is claimed, no conflict of interest could be said to exist between Fullbrook’s role as Chief of Staff to Liz Truss and his shares in a PR and lobbying group. Really?

Johnson’s own Conservative chairman, Ben Elliot, maintained a similar ‘distancing’ between his own PR company and political role of course. It did not discourage the Venezuelan fugitive billionaire Julio Herrera Velutini (now facing charges in the United States) from both donating to the Conservatives and hiring Elliot’s PR company to promote his business.

Neither does CT Group have to disclose its own clients under present rules, despite the fact that endless recent personnel are floating around the corridors of power. Nonetheless, it is established that those clients include members of the tobacco, gambling, alcohol, foods, fossil fuel and mining industries.

When CT Group was commissioned secretly by Boris Johnson to produce a plan to stuff the House of Lords with newly ennobled compliant peers, one piece of legislation that was envisaged in its ‘Project Homer’ report was the relaxing of tobacco regulations.

Sarawak Report can also disclose that Nadhim Zahawi’s connection with CT Group pre-dates his hiring of Mark Fullbrook during the leadership contest. The Iraqi born  businessman is of Kurdish background and achieved a lucrative role as chief strategy officer to the oil company Gulf Keystone which has obtained major concessions in the area controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government under the governing Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP).

It has emerged that a leading member of the KDP was paid kickbacks by Gulf Keystone to seal the deal, nonetheless a London court found in favour of the company against a rival claimant in a bitterly fought case in 2013. CT Group were hired as strategists by the winning side according to information received by Sarawak Report.

Meanwhile registered payments to Zahawi include those by the Government of Bahrain, the Kurdistan Regional Government, the Shura Council of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Kurdistan Regional Parliament of Iraq, to cover the costs of his visits to these regions.

Likewise, Fullbrook’s other headline client since setting up his own consultancy in March, the Libyan rebel politician Fathi Bashagha as first published by the Guardian.

Sunday Times has now revealed that Fullbrook had by June already organised a tour for this foreign political figure in the UK to lobby government decision makers as part of his campaign to entice western powers away from their support of the present leadership of that country. Bashagha is supported by Russia and the mercenary Wagner Group as it seeks the military overthrow of the Government of National Unity (GNU) in Tripoli, established last year through a UN-led process.

The ministers who agreed to see Bashagha in the UK, according to a photograph placed on Bashagha’s website record of the visit, were none other than then Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng and Nadhim Zahawi.

It is therefore worth an explanation as to how exactly Mark Fullbrook’s company came to represent Bashagha so swiftly after forming in March, given that Sarawak Report has yet again traced an interesting connection to CT Group.

Thanks to the tighter reporting rules that exist for foreign lobbyists in the United States (under the Foreign Agents Registration Act) it is a matter of record that Bashagha’s longstanding representatives in the United States are the Washing based lobby group BGR.

The individual who has managed Bashagha’s campaign, according to several reports, including promoting a positive image in the Washington Times, is BGR’s Advisory Board member Dan Hoffman.

Hoffman is an ex-CIA agent who worked in Libya and appears as a contributor on Fox News. Just last July he also joined CT Group as an advisor, leaving a valid question as to why it was the ostensibly independent Fullbrook Strategies who hosted this hot potato Libyan contact in the UK and not CT Group itself?

It leaves further valid questions as to whether sufficient disclosure and transparency rules currently exist to flush out continuing networks and ties between major corporate lobbying outfits and their former operatives as they move in and out of Downing Street influencing policy formation by the political appointees they helped put into office through campaigns for which the funding has not always been completely clear.

Published: 17:41 BST, 29 October 2022 | Updated: 22:00 BST, 29 October 2022

Days after the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, Steven D’Antuono, the head of the FBI’s Washington field office, said the FBI had no intelligence that suggested there would be anything that day but a lawful pro-Trump rally. Six months later, FBI Director Christopher Wray reiterated the claim when he told Congress that the agency he leads had had no specific “intelligence indicating that hundreds and hundreds of people were going to breach the Capitol complex.”

But at Thursday’s hearing of the House Jan. 6 committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., touted “evidence that President Trump was aware of the risk of violence” and that “the FBI, U.S. Capitol Police, Metropolitan Police and other agencies all gathered and disseminated intelligence suggesting the possibility of violence at the Capitol prior to the riot.”

The Biden administration should be demanding answers. Did the leaders of our nation’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies fumble the ball that day? Or was their failure to prevent violence more akin to intentional grounding? Without substantive answers from agency leaders many of us will be left to conclude that there was a willful blindness to the signs that were staring them in the face. Was there institutional sympathy for the rioters’ cause? Were there orders from higher-ups to downplay the available intelligence? Do existing guidelines and laws constrain robust collection and investigation of domestic terror threats? If the premier agencies in federal law enforcement are to maintain credibility, they must be transparent with the public they depend upon and protect.

The FBI is the nation’s primary counterterrorism agency, and Schiff said Thursday that “days before Jan. 6, the president’s senior advisers at the Department of Justice and FBI, for example, received an intelligence summary that included material indicating that certain people traveling to Washington were making plans to attack the Capitol. This summary noted online calls to occupy federal buildings, rhetoric about invading the Capitol building and plans to arm themselves and to engage in political violence at the event.”

The Department of Homeland Security is responsible for approving and disseminating critical intelligence to state and local law enforcement. But according to a March 4 report from the DHS inspector general, DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis “identified specific threat information related to the events on Jan. 6, 2021, but did not issue any intelligence products about these threats until Jan. 8, 2021.” That report also found that “the Field Operations Division (FOD) considered issuing intelligence products on at least three occasions prior to Jan. 6, 2021, but FOD did not disseminate any such products ultimately. It is unclear why FOD failed to disseminate these products.”

Despite what they knew, neither the FBI nor the DHS prepared a disseminable threat assessment for the January Electoral Collage vote ratification or for the rally on the Ellipse.

As for the agency whose paramount mission is to protect the president and vice president of the United States, Schiff said, the committee has obtained “nearly 1 million emails, recordings and other electronic records from the Secret Service.” He said that “As early as Dec. 26, Secret Service officials were sharing one tipster’s warnings about extremist groups coming to the Capitol with murderous plans. ‘They think they will have a large enough group to march into D.C. armed and will outnumber the police so they can’t be stopped,’ the tip read. ‘Their plan is to literally kill people,’ the tipster wrote. ‘Please, please take this tip seriously and investigate further.’”

Previous reporting revealed the Secret Service learned on Parler of a threat against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on Jan. 4 but did not let the Capitol Police know about it until 5:55 p.m. on Jan. 6, when police officers had already been fighting the rioters for hours and some rioters had posted photos from inside Pelosi’s office.

Then there’s the Defense Department, the agency responsible for authorizing deployment of the District of Columbia National Guard. According to testimony to the committee from Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there were calls among the top brass to discuss planning for Jan. 6, and Thursday, Schiff referred to a call with President Trump’s White House National Security staff in early January 2021 wherein: “Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist warned about the potential that the Capitol would be the target of the attack.”

But when Jan. 6 arrived, our law enforcement and intelligence agencies and our military operated like a football team that had ignored the scouting report on its opponent. The FBI, Homeland Security, Secret Service and Defense Department seemed outnumbered and unprepared on Jan. 6. Before its time runs out, it’s important that the committee provide us a play-by-play analysis of what went wrong across these agencies and offer solid recommendations on how to avoid a repeat of that colossal failure.

There’s a difference between losing by clumsily dropping the ball and willfully throwing the game. If the government failure was a fumble caused by outdated policies, inadequate laws and authorities, or insufficient collection and dissemination, then those weaknesses need to get fixed. But if this was a refusal to play to win, that is, a decision to let the opponent have its way, then we’ll need some new players in key positions.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday denied having any intentions of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine but described the conflict there as part of alleged efforts by the West to secure its global domination, which he insisted are doomed to fail.

Speaking at a conference of international foreign policy experts, Putin said it’s pointless for Russia to strike Ukraine with nuclear weapons.

“We see no need for that,” Putin said. “There is no point in that, neither political, nor military.”

Putin said an earlier warning of his readiness to use “all means available to protect Russia” didn’t amount to nuclear saber-rattling but was merely a response to Western statements about their possible use of nuclear weapons.

He particularly mentioned Liz Truss saying in August that she would be ready to use nuclear weapons if she became Britain’s prime minister, a remark which he said worried the Kremlin.

“What were we supposed to think?” Putin said. “We saw that as a coordinated position, an attempt to blackmail us.”

In a long speech full of diatribes against the United States and its allies, Putin accused them of trying to dictate their terms to other nations in a “dangerous, bloody and dirty” domination game.

Putin, who sent his troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, has cast Western support for Ukraine as part of broad efforts by Washington and its allies to enforce its will upon others through a rules-based world order. He argued that the world has reached a turning point, when “the West is no longer able to dictate its will to humankind but still tries to do it, and the majority of nations no longer want to tolerate it.”

The Russian leader claimed that the Western policies will foment more chaos, adding that “he who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind.”

Putin claimed that “humankind now faces a choice: accumulate a load of problems that will inevitably crush us all or try to find solutions that may not be ideal but could work and could make the world more stable and secure.”

Without offering evidence, the Russian leader repeated Moscow’s unproven allegation that Ukraine was plotting a false flag attack involving a radioactive dirty bomb it would try to pin on Russia.

Ukraine has strongly rejected the claim, and its Western allies have dismissed it as “transparently false.” Ukraine argued Russia might be making the unfounded allegation to serve as a cover for its own possible plot to detonate a dirty bomb.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters on Thursday that the U.S. has still not seen anything to indicate that Putin has decided to use a dirty bomb.

Putin said he personally ordered Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to call his foreign counterparts to tell them about the purported plot. He maintained that Russia knows the Ukrainian facilities working on the project.

He mocked the allegations by Ukraine and the West that Russia was firing on the territory of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine as “ravings.” Russian troops have occupied the plant, Europe’s largest, since the early days of the conflict.

Putin also expressed bewilderment about Washington’s policy on China, noting that tensions sparked by a recent visit to Taiwan by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi come amid the U.S.-Russian showdown over Ukraine.

“Why spoil relations with China at the same time?” Putin said. “It seems to defy logic and common sense. It looks like ravings.”

He hailed Russia’s relations with China, but said he hadn’t warned Chinese President Xi Jinping about his intention to send troops into Ukraine when he visited Beijing days before that to attend the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Asked about Washinton’s threat to re-evaluate its relationship with Saudi Arabia over the Riyadh-led OPEC+ alliance’s move to cut oil production, Putin argued that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was acting in his nation’s interests and the need to stabilize global energy markets.

“They need to respect the crown prince and Saudi Arabia, and they will respond in kind,” Putin said. “And they will also respond in kind if they are spoken to in a boorish manner.”

The Russian leader said Russia isn’t the enemy of the West but will continue to oppose the purported diktat of Western neo-liberal elites, accusing them of trying to subdue Russia.

“Their goal is to make Russia more vulnerable and turn it into an instrument for fulfilling their geopolitical tasks, they have failed to achieve it and they will never succeed,” Putin said.

Putin reaffirmed his long-held claim that Russians and Ukrainians are part of a single people and again denigrated Ukraine as an “artificial state” that received historic Russian lands from Communist rulers during the Soviet times.

In that context, he acknowledged that the fighting in Ukraine effectively amounts to a civil war, although the Kremlin calls its actions in Ukraine a “special military operation.”

Putin said he thinks “all the time” about the casualties that Russia has suffered in Ukraine, but insisted that NATO’s refusal to rule out Ukraine’s prospective membership and Kyiv’s refusal to adhere to a peace deal for its separatist conflict in the country’s east has left Moscow no other choice.

He denied underestimating Ukraine’s ability to fight back and insisted that his “special military operation” has proceeded as planned.

Putin also acknowledged the challenges posed by Western sanctions, but argued that Russia has proven resilient to foreign pressure and has become more united.

John Kirby, a U.S. National Security Council spokesman, responded to Putin’s speech as it was underway.

“We don’t believe that Mr. Putin’s strategic goals have changed here. He doesn’t want Ukraine to exist as a sovereign, independent nation state,” Kirby said.

Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

The man accused of breaking into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s California home and severely beating her husband with a hammer appears to have made racist and often rambling posts online, including some that questioned the results of the 2020 election, defended former President Donald Trump and echoed QAnon conspiracy theories.

David DePape, 42, grew up in Powell River, British Columbia, before leaving about 20 years ago to follow an older girlfriend to San Francisco. A street address listed for DePape in the Bay Area college town of Berkeley led to a post office box at a UPS Store.

DePape was arrested at the Pelosi home early Friday. San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said she expected to file multiple felony charges, including attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary and elder abuse.

Stepfather Gene DePape said the suspect had lived with him in Canada until he was 14 and had been a quiet boy.

“David was never violent that I seen and was never in any trouble although he was very reclusive and played too much video games,” Gene DePape said.

He said he hasn’t seen his stepson since 2003 and tried to get in touch with him several times over the years without success.

“In 2007, I tried to get in touch but his girlfriend hung up on me when I asked to talk to him,“ Gene DePape said.

David DePape was known in Berkeley as a pro-nudity activist who had picketed naked at protests against local ordinances requiring people to be clothed in public.

Gene DePape said the girlfriend whom his son followed to California was named Gypsy and they had two children together. DePape also has a child with a different woman, his stepfather said.

Photographs published by The San Francisco Chronicle on Friday identified DePape frolicking nude outside city hall with dozens of others at the 2013 wedding of pro-nudity activist Gypsy Taub, who was marrying another man. Taub did not respond Friday to calls or emails.

A 2013 article in The Chronicle described David DePape as a “hemp jewelry maker” who lived in a Victorian flat in Berkeley with Taub, who hosted a talk show on local public-access TV called “Uncensored 9/11,” in which she appeared naked and pushed conspiracy theories that the 2001 terrorist attacks were “an inside job.”

A pair of web blogs posted in recent months online under the name David DePape contained rants about technology, aliens, communists, religious minorities, transexuals and global elites.

An Aug. 24 entry titled “Q,” displayed a scatological collection of memes that included photos of the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and made reference to QAnon, the baseless pro-Trump conspiracy theory that espouses the belief that the country is run by a deep state cabal of child sex traffickers, satanic pedophiles and baby-eating cannibals.

“Big Brother has deemed doing your own research as a thought crime,” read a post that appeared to blend references to QAnon with George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”

In an Aug. 25 entry titled “Gun Rights,” the poster wrote: “You no longer have rights. Your basic human rights hinder Big Brothers ability to enslave and control you in a complete and totalizing way.”

The web hosting service WordPress removed one of the sites Friday afternoon for violating its terms of service.

On a different site, someone posting under DePape’s name repeated false claims about COVID vaccines and wearing masks, questioned whether climate change is real and displayed an illustration of a zombified Hillary Clinton dining on human flesh.

There appeared to be no direct posts about Pelosi, but there were entries defending former President Donald Trump and Ye, the rapper formally known as Kayne West who recently made antisemitic comments.

In other posts, the writer said Jews helped finance Hitler’s political rise in Germany and suggested an antisemitic plot was involved in Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine.

“The more Ukrainians die NEEDLESSLY the cheaper the land will be for Jews to buy up,” the post said.

In a Sept. 27 post, the writer said any journalists who denied Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election “should be dragged straight out into the street and shot.”

___

AP Global Investigative Reporter Michael Biesecker reported from Washington and Breaking News Investigative Reporter Bernard Condon from New York. Reporters Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles, Olga Rodriguez in San Francisco and news researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed.

David DePape, a 42-year-old with a concerning online presence and ties to a radical nudist activist, is accused of breaking into the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Friday morning and attacking her husband with a hammer, according to city police.

Officers arrested the Berkeley man after they responded to a call around 2:30 a.m. and encountered him and the congresswoman’s 82-year-old husband, Paul Pelosi, struggling over a hammer.

“The suspect pulled the hammer away from Mr. Pelosi and violently assaulted him with it,” San Francisco Police Chief William Scott said during a news briefing later that morning. “Our officers immediately tackled the suspect, disarmed him, took him into custody, requested emergency backup and rendered medical aid.”

Both Pelosi and DePape were taken to the hospital after the incident.

NANCY PELOSI’S HUSBAND PAUL PELOSI ATTACKED BY SUSPECT WHO SHOUTED ‘WHERE IS NANCY?’: SOURCE

The attack left Pelosi hospitalized, but he is expected to make a full recovery after undergoing successful surgery on a fractured skull, according to Drew Hammill, Nancy Pelosi’s spokesman. He also suffered serious injuries on his left arm and both hands.

Hammill said that DePape threatened Paul Pelosi’s life while demanding to see his wife.

The suspect allegedly broke into the house and began shouting “Where is Nancy?” sources told Fox News earlier in the day

“Mr. DePape will be booked at San Francisco County Jail on the following charges of attempted homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, burglary and several other additional felonies,” the chief said.

The motive remained under investigation, he added. The FBI and Capitol Police were assisting.

PAUL PELOSI SAN FRANCISCO ATTACK: WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT VIOLENT HOME INVASION

DePape has been described on Twitter alternately as a far-right extremist and a nudist who sold handmade jewelry.

He also had ties to a Berkeley nudist activist named Gypsy Taub, according to California State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco.

“She was the ringleader and she was extremely aggressive and creepy,” Wiener told Fox News Digital Friday. “And I think he was one of the people in her work.”

They weren’t “regular” nudity activists either, he said. They were aggressive, and she embraced 9/11 denials and has a criminal past.

According to an Alameda County District Attorney’s Office press release from last summer, a woman named Oxane Taub who shared the address was convicted of more than 20 charges after stalking a 14-year-old boy she had become “fixated on” and attempted to kidnap.

“Over the course of 14 months, she sent him numerous obsessive emails, created blogs directed at him, used his friends to send him messages and eventually tried to abduct him a few blocks from his school in Berkeley,” District Attorney Nancy O’Malley’s office said at the time. “While the case was pending, Taub also tried to dissuade the victim from testifying.”

Separate court filings show a 2017 lawsuit over Wiener’s anti-nudity ordinance was filed by a plaintiff named Oxane “Gypsy” Taub.

The FBI arrived at Taub’s address Friday afternoon and asked a young man there about DePape. He told them DePape hadn’t been there in years.

Facebook disabled DePape’s profile early Friday and declined to answer questions. At least two online blogs under DePape’s name are stocked with posts from the years of 2007 and 2022 speaking of “censorship,” “Big Brother,” and pedophiles. One contained calls for violence and antisemitic content. It was not immediately clear that he was responsible for the posts, and San Francisco police did not immediately respond to questions about DePape’s online presence.

Teresa DePape, the wife of the suspect’s adoptive father Gene, told the San Francisco Chronicle that he left Canada after high school, roughly two decades ago, and the family lost touch.

“I never thought of David as a violent person,” she told the paper. “I can see David defending himself – why he’s in somebody’ else’s house looking for someone, I don’t know.”

CONGRESSIONAL LAWMAKERS AGHAST AFTER PELOSI’S HUSBAND ATTACKED DURING BREAK IN

The Pelosi’s $8.4 million townhouse is located in an upscale area patrolled by the San Francisco Police Department’s Northern Station, which saw a 4.3% uptick in total crime for the region year-to-date as of Oct. 23, police records show. Violent crime for the Northern Station was up 5.2% in the same period, compared to the prior year.

Fox News’ Adam Sabes, Stephanie Pagones and David Spunt contributed to this report.

In New York, it’s only natural to look up at the city’s imposing, iconic skyscrapers.

But cast an eye downwards, into the subterranean spaces beneath the pavement, and you’ll find a much different kind of tourist attraction that’s every bit as fascinating as the Empire State Building or Rockefeller Center.

For many years, a community dubbed the ‘Mole People’, who lived on the fringes of society, made their homes in underground shantytowns built in the city’s disused Subway tunnels among the rats and rubble.

READ MORE: ‘I died drowning and was in after life queue but humanoids sent me back through tunnel’

The infamous ‘Freedom Tunnel’, a 2.6-mile long burrow named after graffiti artist Chris ‘Freedom’ Pape who painted his work on its walls, is where many of the so-called Mole People chose to settle.

The passage, once used by Amtrak trains travelling to and from Pennsylvania Station, runs beneath Riverside Park in Manhattan.

The Freedom Tunnel has been home to hundreds of people over the years
(Image: Youtube/Erik K Swanson)

When trains stopped running in 1980, it became a den for the homeless. By 1994, it had almost 100 residents.

Providing shelter and relative safety that rough sleepers weren’t always afforded on the mean streets of New York, the tunnels did, however, have problems of their own, including drugs, rats and freezing temperatures.

Filmmaker Erik K. Swanson went underground to meet tunnel dwellers in 2008. The footage was finally released earlier this year.

In his YouTube film, called Mole People – Living in the Tunnels Beneath New York, we meet Walter, who had lived in the space for 20 years. His home had electricity, a computer, stereo and oven.

Walter lived in the tunnel for more than 20 years and was proud of his home
(Image: Youtube/Erik K Swanson)

Walter, who gave his age as nearing 60, is seen proudly showing off the Betty Boop slippers he liked to wear while pottering around in his underground home.

He said: “When I’m in my house, I can play my movies, play music, I have my books, I make my own meals, I have a toaster oven.”

Another man, Carlos was living in the Amtrak tunnel in 2007 when he bumped into Swanson.

In the film, he tells how he had struggled to hold down a job, but preferred life in the tunnels to shelters above ground, which he described as “wicked”, rife with drugs and violence.

Carlos was living in the tunnel in 2007
(Image: Youtube/Erik K Swanson)

“I got everything I need you know, I got my own place, everything is ok,” he said.

Carlos, whose home was equipped with heating, a microwave, fridge, and computer, had lived there for two years.

However, not everyone had a positive experience living in the tunnels.

Rob Staskiewicz, a homeless veteran who spent 17 years in prison, lived in tunnels beneath Penn Station and Hudson Yards.

Carlos entered his home through a hatch above ground
(Image: Youtube/Erik K Swanson)

He told the Guardian: “Living in the tunnels sucks, man.

“It’s horrible. You can’t shower, you can’t eat. There are people who only come out for supplies.

“You got tunnels uptown, you got subway tunnels that are cut off. Midtown is best cause there’s the most people around.”

The Freedom Tunnel first reopened in 1991, leading to mass evictions and the demolition of the underground homes but in the years following, homeless people found a way back inside.

The Mole People, Walter and Carlos included, were forced out of their shantytown homes around 2009 when Amtrak started to reclaim the space, using it as storage.

Inside Carlos’ home beneath New York City where he lived for two years
(Image: Youtube/Erik K Swanson)

Sadly, according to Swanson, Walter died after being hit by a train in 2012.

He said he waited 14 years to edit and publish the footage “out of respect for Walter’s privacy and the secrecy of his home”.

Today, urban explorers and curious folk with a disregard for their own safety often venture into the Freedom Tunnel to admire and photograph the graffiti art that adorns the walls.

Although the homes are underground the Mole People have electricity and places to cook
(Image: Youtube/Erik K Swanson)

Swanson returned to the space in August and noted the transformation.

He said: “I went back down to the tunnel the other day. Much has changed since the last time I was there, and even more so, since this video was shot.

“No one lives in this section of tunnel any more. The entire area has been cleaned out, and is used as storage for Amtrak maintenance trains and equipment. There is a lot of activity right in the area – construction, park maintenance crews, etc.

“I ran into one former tunnel resident and another man who lives elsewhere. They confirmed that everyone was cleared out several years ago, and regular sweeps of this area are done by the cops.”

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