Random News and Notes 4 December

We start with a breaking story. Or at least the reports of a breaking story. Per multiple outlets – with no gov corroboration – a suspect in the J6 pipe bomb thing has been arrested. The reporting seems to agree that a man was arrested in Northern Virginia on charges related to the pipe bomb plot.

You may recall that another outlet reported they had figured out the bomber was a woman- specifically a Capitol police officer. Seems not. . .

This is a breaking story and we will be following it closely and updating/new posting as needed.

There has been an update to this story just as it was about to post. The Feds have identified Brian Cole,33, as the suspect.

This one is baffling on a couple of levels. A pair of twin brothers from Alexandria VA have been arrested. Muneeb and Sohaib Akhter face federal charges for conspiring to delete around 96 government databases after Opexus – a federal contractor – fired them in February. Muneeb allegedly destroyed DHS records including FOIA files and sensitive investigations, stole IRS data on 450 people, and accessed EEOC files without permission. Sohaib was charged with trafficking in a password that could access a computer used by and for the government of the United States.

Bad enough right? It gets worse- much worse. The brothers were previously convicted of similar crimes. In 2015 they pleaded guilty to hacking State Department systems while employed by a different government contractor. Muneeb served 39 months and Sohaib 24. Oh, and they seem to be anchor babies. Their father is a Saudi national and their mother is Pakistani. They were born in Maryland while their father was in the country on some sort of work visa. He has since returned to Saudi Arabia and resides there. The twins’ mother and two sisters live in Springfield VA.

Muneeb faces 45 years plus and Sohaib is looking at 6.

This is interesting. The Trump admin just lifted the rules that prevented the importation of the Toyota Hi-Lux Champ, a compact inexpensive pickup.

The rule change also authorizes the production of Kei cars for the US market. Kei cars are micro compacts – 600 cc engines, 63 HP or less and an overall length of less than 3.4 m – that have proven to be extremely popular across the world. Retail is typically less than $10k. Depending on where you live, you may have seen some gray-market import Kei cars rolling around on the streets.

So the whole ‘double tap’ hoax just went up in flames. ABC is reporting that the two narco-terrorists climbed back on to the boat.

This whole thing was overblown. Nobody outside of the chain of command for that particular op knows what the targets were. For all anyone knows the terrorists were the target. The former JAG officers that ran their mouths about this need to be recalled and court-martialled. Pour encourager les autres as it were.