Surefire Intelligence's "Financial Investigator" in Zurich is Christoph Waltz. What a great hire!
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Aric Toler
@AricToler
Visual Investigations
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Tips, questions, etc. - DMs are open, or aric.toler@nytimes.com
Aric Toler’s posts
The judge who granted the search warrant against the Marion, KS newspaper once drove into a school building. This happened while her license was suspended for an earlier DUI. She had been an active prosecutor for eight years already when this happened.
Took a while, but I found the Odnoklassniki profile of the Allen. TX shooter described in this NYT article:
ok.ru/profile/574887
Even better: this is from the hard drives recovered from Osama bin Laden's compound
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the cia is hosting a strategy guide for command & conquer tiberian sun on its website
The new Reuters investigation into the soldiers who were in Bucha is great, with the best part being how one guy painted his Instagram handle onto a civilian's wall.
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Hard to understate how insane this is. Rostov has over a million people, Russia's 11th most populated city and a military hub. It's like disgruntled Blackwater vets seizing San Diego against little to no resistance.
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Jacob Wohl is a moron and didn't realize that there are reverse image search engines other than Google when he was adding filters to these pictures. Yandex got this as the very first result.
Ukrainska Pravda (w/ SBU help) figured out if Kadyrov was actually in Ukraine, as he claimed, by sending him a "draft" for a story on Telegram for him to review. He clicked it, and saw from server logs that he was actually in Grozny.
Easy phishing target!
pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2022/
Texas police have confirmed the shooter had Nazi tattoos.
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Musk doubles down on his claims that there's no evidence the Allen, Texas mall shooter had white supremacist beliefs, and that @bellingcat "does psy-ops" professionally.
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Rudy is so bad at this that he released a Blackberry screenshot of a Russian iphone (note the MTS network) that supposedly came from a Delaware computer repair shop.
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Hunter Biden text exchange from June 2017 obtained by #FoxNews ranting to his business partners about not wanting to "sign over my family's brand", "the keys to my family's only asset" to Tony Bobulinski. Warning: foul language.
A few days ago, the Grey Zone (RSOTM) Telegram channel posted photos of a visit to the so-called Wagner HQ in the Donbas (Popasna). Prigozhin may have been there.
The photos were apparently easy to geolocate. Ukraine destroyed it in a HIMARS strike today. t.me/grey_zone/14670
Allen, TX shooter:
Posts identification cards, guns, body armor, a speeding ticket with his name, hours of video of him at shooting ranges at his apartment, photos of his tattoos seen on the shooter's body, a map of the mall 3 weeks before he shot it up, and a final message
Elon:
lmaoooo Tucker Calrson asked Hunter Biden to try to help him get his son into Georgetown
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Reposting with more redaction: Lin Wood doxxed both Hunter Biden and Tucker Carlson's contact info as of 2014. Yikes.
Sure looks like this weird "private intel agency" is the one that made the dodgy Mueller accusation. They claim to have been founded by ex-Mossad lol
Yesterday, Russian propaganda channels (notably the infamous Pozdyankov) posted a video showing "dead" Ukrainian troops on a river bank. Today, a Ukrainian channel posted the full video, showing the "dead" soldiers all stand up. They sent a fake video to Russians as a joke.
I interviewed the same guy this weekend, basically everything in the Post article corroborates my investigation here (a single citation or hyperlink would have been nice, but oh well)
bellingcat.com/news/2023/04/0
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Exclusive: The man behind a massive leak of U.S. government secrets that has exposed spying on allies, revealed the grim prospects for Ukraine’s war with Russia and ignited diplomatic fires for the White House is a young, charismatic gun enthusiast who shared highly classified… Show more
read image description
ALT
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I wonder if the Allen, TX was a white supremacist? If only there was a post that he made himself where we could find out, in context of him being Latino himself.
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You know a war is going well when you lose a fleet's flagship while fighting a country without a navy
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Surefire Intelligence's "Head of Government Relations" also works as a model for stock photos.
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Surefire Intelligence's "Tel Aviv Station Chief" is an Israeli supermodel
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Surefire Intelligence's LA "Private Investigator" is British model/photographer Nick Hopper.
Some maga diehard on TheDonald accidentally summed up Trump better than any Atlantic or NYT op-ed writer ever could
This procedurally-generated video from the Facebook of Robert Gieswein, a Colorado 3% militia member who stormed the Capitol, is accidentally the most damning evidence you'll ever see that Facebook shouldn't exist.
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New from me: Prosecutors have charged an alleged Colorado militia member, Robert Gieswein, which The Daily Beast has been tracking since he appeared in photos of the riot at the Capitol. thedailybeast.com/baseball-bat-w
Totally unrelated: most of these bunkers (many in rural New Zealand) can be and have been geolocated through press photos from bunker construction companies. Cross reference with visible construction on Google Earth and Sentinel Playground.
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Super-rich jet off to disaster bunkers amid coronavirus outbreak theguardian.com/world/2020/mar
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Hahahahahhaha Jacob Wohl (the "LA hipster cafe" guy) is tied to the DNS records for the place that did the "investigation" for this thing. He used jacob.wohl@nexmanagement.com when setting up the site.
surefireintelligence.com.cutestat.com
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Probably done posting in this thread, but in summary:
The Allen shooter was obviously a white supremacist / neo-Nazi. He was basically announcing that he was going to do a mass shooting for months beforehand, and planned his target weeks in advance.
It took about six years, but Trump has finally won his feud with Smokey the Bear
Texas police have just confirmed that the shooter had Nazi tattoos.
starlocalmedia.com/allenamerican/
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Surefire Intelligence's "Deputy Director of Operations" is a minister from Michigan.
Yes, the guy had a giant swastika tattoo, an SS tattoo, wrote how he was a white supremacist, said that Nazis were his "kind of people", and signed a post with "Heil Hitler".
But rational inquiry demands we consider if he was actually just doing a bit.
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Yeah, the guy had Nazi tattoos. Rational inquiry still requires examining additional context. These symbols aren't magically dispositive -- Charles Manson carved a swastika on his forehead. Not because was a Literal Nazi, but because he was a headcase who wanted to shock people twitter.com/gmwvheel/statu…
Readers added context
Charles Manson espoused white supremacist views and inspired his followers to commit murders in order to cause a “race war” he called “Helter Skelter.”
In prison, Manson sought the protection of the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood.
independent.co.uk/news/world/ame…
newsweek.com/charles-manson…
New investigation on the 3 videos showing the castration and murder of a Ukrainian PoW. We geolocated the footage, confirmed that the Akhmat group was indeed responsible, and identified & called the now-infamous Akhmat fighter wearing the hat.
The bearded guy is Alexey Levkin. We () have written lot about him -- he's a neo-Nazi who left Russia years ago.
His organization, Wotanjugend, once called Timothy McVeigh and Brevik "heroes".
bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu
bellingcat.com/news/2020/01/0
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Apparently, a new video from two Free Russia Legion fighters. They say the border is broken, Putin is unable to respond. One is wearing the Free Russia Legion insignia on his chest.
Readers added context
The men in the video wear the Russian Volunteer Corps insignia. Not the Free Russian Legion insignia.
Wiki w/Insignia:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_V…
News Report — Russian volunteer unit carries out orchestrated attack in border region of Belgorod:
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1…
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I guess we'll never know if this guy was a liberal or fascist or anything else, oh well
New on : we (mostly ) identified the team of Russian programmers who guide the rockets attacking Ukraine. Christo even identified who was working on which missile type.
Thanks to investigative partners and
bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu
This should have been obvious, but no, our story naming the Pentagon/Discord leaker didn't help the feds find him. They already knew at least a day before we identified him.
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco
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One last thing, noticed by : the Allen shooter was a big fan of and signed off on one of his posts with "Heil Hitler"
New on : I put together a walk-through on how we geolocated a group photo of Russian missile programmers, many of which are now responsible for guiding the missiles attacking Ukraine.
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Christ, just noticed this -- he was at the mall where he did the attack 3 weeks prior. He was monitoring the peak visiting times on Google.
A "fake Russian profile" that has posts going back over a year, over a thousand photos, multiple photos of the ID cards and receipts addressed to the Allen shooter.
Craig Robertson, from Provo, UT, was killed today by the FBI during a raid after he made threats against Biden. Here are some of his recent Facebook posts -- all just in the last two days.
abcnews.go.com/Politics/man-k
How could the police have ever known they were going to storm the Capitol?????
(These posts are from before Trump's speech, check the timestamp in the code)
I took a look at the Yandex Food (basically Russian Doordash) leak to see what investigative leads could be found within. Turns out: a lot of FSB officers like to have food delivered to their work, with detailed delivery instructions.
New on :
He literally posted multiple identification cards with his name and face, pictures of receipts with his name and city, and photos of the mall where he carried out his mass shooting a few weeks before he did it. He also posted a manifesto/suicide note right before the shooting.
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Replying to @AricToler and @Timcast
None of your posts ties the shooter to your posts.
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(DC POLICE) MPD CHIEF : "There was no intelligence that suggests that there would be a breach of the US Capitol. "
A huge chunk of those storming the Capitol were off duty cops and military vets, who planned everything on open forums with maps and schedules. Ignore anyone who says we need more laws and surveillance to stop this, especially considering the same cops will do this surveillance.
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The House must as an immediate step pass a domestic terrorism statute, with a focus on white supremacist terrorism, and send it to the Senate.
Randi Nord spray painted a swastika on a synagogue and wrote "AZOV", trying to blame Ukraine. Since then, MintPress has removed the bylines from her articles, her author page has been removed from her own site, and Max Blumenthal deleted an old tweet where he shouted her out.
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Replying to @BadBalticTakes
They’re urgently trying to scrub her name everywhere they can.
Worth noting that the Allen shooter didn't have any friends or groups on his OK profile -- he used it like a personal diary. He may have chosen OK because it has virtually zero content moderation.
Going through this, there are a *lot* of active duty U.S. soldiers on this forum.
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Replying to @Jake_Hanrahan
Apparently the entire SQL database of the international neo-fascist Iron March forum (where Atomwaffen first properly organised). Contains info on all users, including user emails, IP address, and private messages, as well as all posts and comments. Enjoy. archive.org/details/iron_m
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Calling someone a violent incel has lost a lot of meaning in the last few years with the term being so overused. But yeah it fits here.
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Looking into the employees for "Surefire Intelligence" on LinkedIn, and it's not a promising start for this being a legit place.
I'm looking at some of the #MAGAChallenge videos and am horrified. And also archiving them all here: drive.google.com/open?id=1O4fLI
Wow, Russia is finally going to really take off its gloves, and try something incredibly dramatic it's never done before, like maybe to take Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson.
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Replying to @stillgray
So the thing you need to know about the Kremlin's statement is that when it regards something as a terrorist attack, that means that the gloves come off and it doesn't have to play for the cameras.
It goes without saying, but this invasion isn't just into the Donbas. Explosions in Kharkiv and Odesa (at the port) within 10 minutes of Putin's speech ending.
It's insane that the Kyiv Independent started just a few months ago after a catastrophic split from the Kyiv Post. Now, they have 1.5m followers, almost a million $ on GoFundMe, about $50k/month on Patreon. What a huge mistake from the Kyiv Post, to put it mildly.
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We were fired by the newspaper owner for defending the editorial independence. But we won’t be silenced. Ukraine needs on-the-ground English-language journalism of the highest quality and our readers need a source they can trust.
That’s why we are launching The Kyiv Independent!
You know your war is going great when your triumphant propaganda videos are supply deliveries
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He also posted his handwritten personal diary. Everything I've seen shows that this is about the most textbook mass shooter you'll ever find, and he tells you about it every step of the way. He'll be a reference point for decades on mass shooters because he shared so much.
At 0:18 of this clip, the IDF show a "missile launcher" that Hamas supposedly embeds into civilian neighborhoods. It's actually a decoy weapon used by the Israeli military, and was filmed in northwestern Israeli.
(great eye from )
Source: twitter.com/TaylorPBrooks/
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This information was not changed or added ever since Wohl started tweeting about a Mueller accusation. Google cache from October 27 shows that his email was in the DNS records then (archived: web.archive.org/web/2018103019)
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Flashback to 's 2019 Bellingcat article on how mass shootings have been "gamified", with the Allen shooter talking about a "decent kill score" in Nashville.
bellingcat.com/news/americas/
A lot of people were asking how Russia respond to bombing a literal maternity hospital. I figured they'd just not address it or say it was full of weapons. Turns out, they're even more ghoulish: this woman is actually pregnant -- you can find her IG -- and was nearly killed. twitter.com/RussianEmbassy
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Using Findclone on these guys is like shooting fish out a barrel. (Found both Russian & Belarusian men among the CCTV footage of the looting)
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- Hello,darling,I looted, raped, tortured and killed in #Ukraine. But I am sending you a TV, air conditioners,e-scooters and other goods.
I watched the 3-hour CCTV recording from a courier service in Mazyr, #Belarus. Russian servicemen send endless packages with what they stole
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I remember reading in school about how there would be crowds of civilians who'd recreationally watch battles in the 18th/19th century, and about how insane that sounded at the time.
t.me/lentachold/616
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The most recent post on his OK profile is basically his manifesto/suicide note. He closes it with a quote from South Park.
There are like 15 people in America not in this photo who believe this stuff, but it's still so insanely funny that these people think that the DNR is even a tiny bit on the left. The entire state is ran by far-right ponzi scheme artists who immediately shut down labor unions.
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CPI opening ceremony with Soviet and American flags with The Internationale and The Star-Spangled Banner playing in the background before the unvailing of the Donetsk People's Republic flag! Proud to be apart of this historic day!
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Head of the LNR posted a video about evacuation on the state news outlet, but the metadata shows that the file was created two days ago (Telegram retains metadata). Testing some other videos on the channel to see other creation dates, will post below.
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Згідно із метаданими відео про "евакуацію" з очільником окупаційної адміністрації РФ на окупованій частині Луганщини Пасічником, його було записано щонайменше за 2 доби до публікації, 16.02.2022. Тобто ще до того, як за версією РФ "Україна почала атаку" 
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(Also, forgot to post this earlier: I found his OK profile by searching for active profiles with the filters of his birthday, those living in the US, and male. About 50 results, and the Hitler smiley face avatar made it an easy pick for my first choice of checking if it was him)
We're doing a pretty bad job at it if we were. Sorry if this guy's biography is inconvenient.
New on : an insane investigation that seems like it was plagiarized from about a Russian spy who became a socialite in Naples, infiltrating social circles at the NATO's Allied Joint Force Command in Naples.
Skies over Donetsk, crazy. I'd say this looks like CGI if it weren't filmed by lots of different people. Thermite, not phosphorus (thanks )
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Wow, a Belarusian group received data from some "неравнодушные люди" (i.e. hackers or internal leakers from SDEK) that identified the people who used this parcel delivery service to return loot back to Russia. Included are names, phone, and items delivered
Brief walk-through on how to geolocate this photo from Rudy Giuliani's spokeswoman (subject of this piece politico.com/news/2019/12/1) without using any mapping services:
We found posts on a public Discord server from Jack Teixeira going back to February 25, 2022 - the day after Russia's full invasion of Ukraine - with information from classified intelligence reports.
Zip tie guy finally found
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Replying to @jsrailton and @blckriflecoffee
Hi, old friend. I think I got him. Eric Munchel of TN.
He literally posted a manifesto on the day he went on his shooting spree.
He got swastika tattoos and proudly posted them.
He posted tons of pictures of various Nazis saying that they were his "kind of people".
He said he would "take my chances with the white supremacist".
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Based on the shooter's posts, his primary interest seems to be heavy metal type music -- sprinkled in with assorted Nazi stuff, including a Hitler cartoon icon he appears especially proud of. No manifesto-style articulations of belief, but still very screwed up and depressing
Scariest part of the Putin speech is when he recognized the LDNR borders according to their constitution -- the entire Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Ukraine controls like 70% of this area now. Stole this map from a Krasnodar news outlet to show the scale.
My first byline with the NYT, detailing some of the new Discord/Pentagon leaks.
From nightly news bragging about taking Kyiv in three days, to a nation holding its breath to see nightly reports about who controls the loading dock of the Semya supermarket in western Bakhmut
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Russia's progress in Ukraine is so slow that state TV reports on the war now feature street plans indicating which side controls *individual buildings* in Bakhmut
I'm pretty sure this wasn't the aim when Putin launched his "special military operation" last year...
Andy doesn't believe this because he's shocked that there's a right-wing mass shooter who didn't cite him as an inspiration twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/stat
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He was trying to be the Zodiac Killer I guess
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What an insane sentence this is to read. Russia went from bragging that they'd take Kyiv in days to clarifying that Putin wasn't hurt by a Ukrainian drone attack in *Moscow*
Got a hold of the VGTRK mega-leak. Will post findings/interesting bits in this thread as I go through it (could take a very, very long time).
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Boxes upon boxes of ammunition that he apparently received a few weeks before the shooting. These photos were posted at the same time as pictures he took at the Allen Mall.
We don't know exactly who leaked those 100+ Pentagon documents online. But in a new investigation, I talked to several people on the Discord server with 20 active users where they may have first originated.
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Receipt for the Kit that the Allen, TX shooter bought back in 2020, posted a few weeks before the shooting. He also posted photos of his weapons.
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Very straightforward and simple proof: satellite images captured during the Russian occupation show the same bodies in the same position as photographed when Ukraine retook the town.
Maybe I'm crazy, but I think the missile that blew up the plane is a bigger reason for the crash than the airspace decision. twitter.com/SputnikInt/sta
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Cancelling the Bellingcat pro Zoom account, and we'll migrate all our webinars /trainings to a new platform right away. twitter.com/tedgioia/statu
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The Council of Blue Checks convening to figure out this sub thing
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Put this dude in the Posters Hall of Fame if he's sent to a CIA black site in Poland for posting these on 4chan to win an argument against pepe and anime avatars anons
Even Russian Z-milbloggers are dunking all over the Russian MoD for claiming to have their first confirmed kill of a Leopard tank
(It was actually a tractor)
One of the drones that crashed in the Oryol oblast last night had a Wagner sticker on it. Clever Ukrainian trolling.
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Footage is nuts -- it shows Russian soldiers boxing and wrapping random objects at a Belarusian parcel delivery service near the Ukrainian border. Doesn't take an imagination to figure out where they got them from and where they're going. Here's a guy mailing an electric scooter
