Julian Assange is somewhat notorious in the United States for his work on the famed website WikiLeaks. The site would publish documents leaked by whistleblowers from any powerful place the entertainment industry or even a government. Whether you agree with their actions or not, their work was a search for truth with the hope of justice.

However, Assange & WikiLeaks crossed a line in 2010 after four years of running the site. The United States government was furious and Assange has been on the run ever since. If you dont recall what happened with Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, and the U.S. government, lets recap it. Then well look at why hes making headlines for possible extradition again.

WikiLeaks wasnt Assanges first transgression. The Australian-born man was convicted of hacking all the way back in 1995. He got off with a fine and a promise not to do it again.

In 2006 Assange decided to co-found the website WikiLeaks where people could send information & documents in order to expose the nasty & illegal secrets of the world. There was contention about the site for years. Questions of legality in many instances arose, and some wondered whether this was truly the best outlet for whistleblowers.

In 2010 WikiLeaks posted a video from a U.S. military helicopter that bore proof of eighteen civilians being killed in Baghdad, Iraq. Following this, the website also posted hundreds of thousands of documents from U.S. Army intelligence. The whistleblowers name is Chelsea Manning.

The U.S. government was exposed for having killed 66,000 civilians deaths that went unreported. The documents also contained information regarding the torture of prisoners. It wasnt long before the U.S. government made it clear they had every intention of prosecuting Julian Assange for his part in the major military leak. He was forced to flee to anywhere he could find asylum after exposing the war crimes.

Julian Assanges life has been tumultuous ever since his decision to post the 2010 documents, but as of today, hes in a British prison. Specifically, hes being held at the Belmarsh Prison in London. He was originally arrested under the pretense of a Swedish extradition request due to a completely different circumstance in Sweden, but it has now become clear the arrest was for the United States desire of extradition.

The United States has eighteen charges against Julian Assange (meanwhile, Chelsea Manning, the woman who gave the documents to Assange, was given a presidential pardon by Barack Obama). Assanges charges include one count of conspiracy to receive national defense information, seven counts of obtaining national defense information, nine counts of disclosure of national defense information, and one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.

Each individual charge could net Assange a potential maximum sentence of ten years in prison, save for the final charge, which only carries a maximum sentence of five years provided, of course, hes found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Right now, Assange has three countries pursuing him the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the United States. He was found guilty of breaching bail in the UK which could force him to spend up to 12 months in prison.

For the U.S., theyll have to wait for a decision from a British court as to whether Julian Assange will be extradited for his WikiLeaks involvement. However, the U.S. may also have to contend with a possible request from Sweden. The country once was pursuing sexual assault claims pointed at Assange, but they were later dropped. Sweden has now said theyre considering reopening the case.

Now that Julian Assange is no longer safe in asylum it appears he will, after all these years, have to go to court.

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Will Julian Assange finally be extradited for his WikiLeaks work? - Film Daily

Image Courtesy of CNN

By: Jeremy Perillo

A new bipartisan report released by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee affirms that Russia did indeed interfere with the 2016 election to help President Donald Trump win the White House. The report comes as Trumps allies continue to protest any accusations against Trump, his allies, or his campaign when it comes to Russian interference.

The nearly one thousand-page report signals the end of the committees three-year probe into election meddling by the Russians. One of the concerns made by senators was that especially given the 2020 election is less than eighty days away, interference, particularly from the Russians, is nearly a guarantee for the upcoming election.

The committee investigation was able to go beyond what Robert Muellers report outlined since Mueller and his team was limited to calls of criminality outlined in the special counsel probe. Mueller concluded that Russian interference was sweeping and apparent, but found no criminal conspiracy between the Russians and the Trump campaign.

The key findings from this new report offer more details and a better perspective on Russian interference during the last election. One of those findings delves further into former Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and his connections with a Russian intelligence officer. The committee speculates that that Russian intelligence officer may have been connected to the 2016 Russian hacking operation. Overall, the committee held Manaforts role in the campaign represented a grave counterintelligence threat.

The report also discussed how Trump and senior campaign officials sought information on Wikileaks email dumps through Roger Stone, and that Trump had indeed discussed Wikileaks with Stone, despite telling the special counsel otherwise.

The committee found that the information gained from the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russian nationals was part of a broader influence operation by the Kremlin, and made clear to note that there was no evidence that the Trump campaign knew of that. The Russian nationals had significant connections and ties to the Russian government and Russian intelligence.

Given the drama surrounding these various high-profile events with the Trump campaign, another aspect the report touches on how various Russian-government actors continued to spread misinformation on Russian election interference, into 2020. The report specifically names Manafort and his Russian connection as individuals who promoted the narrative that Ukraine interfered with the election, rather than Russia.

While the committees report, and various other government investigations, have cleared Trump or his campaign from colluding with the Russians, the report shows the exhaustive extent Russia took to influence the results of the 2016 election.

We can say, without any hesitation, that the Committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election, said Senator Marco Rubio, the committees acting chairman. What the Committee did find, however, is very troubling. We found irrefutable evidence of Russian meddling.

I encourage all Americans to carefully review the documented evidence of the unprecedented and massive intervention campaign waged on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump by Russians and their operatives and to reach their own independent conclusions, said Senator Mark Warner, the committees Ranking Member.

The responses show a divide in how both sides are positioning this report. Republicans find this report as another exoneration of the Trump campaign, as there was no evidence of collusion. Democrats seem to disregard that fact, and would rather focus on the appalling efforts by the Russians to influence the Trump campaign.

There is little doubt that government investigations will quickly reveal unprecedented foreign interference in the election, unfortunately confirming the fears of many American voters throughout this election cycle. This report will be one of many reviewed as the government acts on the inevitable perversion of American democracy.

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Republican-led Senate Panel Reinforces Russian Interference - Catholic University of America The Tower

Recently, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a fifth report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. Senate insiders obviously coordinated with allies in the media to spin the 1,000-page report in a desperate effort to revive the Russian collusion hoax.

Robert Mueller deputy Andrew Weissmann, who is promoting a new book, helped pump up the new revelations, citing information about Paul Manafort and Konstantin Kilimniks relationship and Roger Stones alleged foreknowledge of the public release of WikiLeaks emails. Neither story is new and both have been thoroughly debunked by the free, non-legacy press, such as The Federalist. Below is a brief, partial list of debunked conspiracy theories the report attempted to resurrect with the help of hoaxers in the media.

The report found that Manaforts presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. Taken as a whole, Manaforts high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat.

This is false. Manafort shared internal Trump campaign polling data with Kilimnik, a longtime employee. Neither the Mueller report nor the Senate report produced evidence, beyond innuendo, the Kilimnik was an active intelligence officer acting on orders from the Kremlin.

In the immediate aftermath of the May 2019 special counsel report, reporter Paul Sperry debunked the reports innuendo against Kilimnik. He wrote,

The special prosecutors report indicated that one of Manaforts Kremlin handlers was Konstantin Kilimnik. Manafort briefed Kilimnik on the state of the Trump Campaign and Manaforts plan to win the election, it said. That briefing encompassed the Campaigns messaging and its internal polling data. It also included discussion of battleground states, which Manafort identified as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Minnesota.

Except that this wouldnt have been an unusual conversation: Kilimnik was a longtime Manafort employee who ran the Ukraine office of his lobbying firm. Footnotes in Muellers report show that Manafort shared campaign information to impress a former business partner, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who was suing him over financial losses. Mueller failed to tie the information exchange to Russian espionage. He also failed to mention that Deripaska is an FBI informant.

The New York Times broke that Deripaska was a U.S. informant the FBI tried to use to entrap the Trump campaign. The Times then reported that the FBI pressed Mr. Deripaska about whether his former business partner, Mr. Manafort, had served as a link to the Kremlin during his time as Mr. Trumps campaign chairman.Mr. Deripaska, though, told the F.B.I. agents that while he had no love for Mr. Manafort, with whom he was in a bitter business dispute, he found their theories about his role on the campaign preposterous. Yet in its dishonest reporting on the latest Senate report, the Times failed to cite its own scoop from September 2018.

The Senate report claims, The information that Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer, offered during the June 9, 2016 meeting and planned to offer again at the follow-up meeting requested by Aras. Agalarov was part of a broader influence operation targeting the United States that was coordinated, at least in part, with elements of the Russian government.

If thats true, then Hillary Clinton and Democrat PR firm Fusion GPS were the ones working with the Russians to interfere with the election. In June 2016, members of the Trump campaign including Donald Trump Jr. briefly met with an oddball delegation that included two Russians, one of whom claimed to have dirt on Hillary Clinton.

The firm Clinton hired to frame Trump for colluding with the Russians, Fusion GPS, had longstanding ties with both of those Russians, Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin. The Senate report discloses that Veselnitskaya used research from Fusion GPS as bait.

Obviously, its not a coincidence that the two Russians the Trump campaign met also happened to be working with the firm hired to frame Trump for colluding with the Russians. Indeed, as noted by the Senate report, Veselnitskaya had dinner with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson the night before and after the Trump Tower meeting.

As noted in 2018 by Lee Smith, A growing body of evidence, however, indicates that the meeting may have been a setup part of a broad effort to tarnish the Trump campaign involving Hillary Clinton operatives employed by Kremlin-linked figures and Department of Justice officials. This view, that the real collusion may have taken place among those who arranged the meeting rather than the Trump officials who agreed to attend it.

Its totally dishonest to include this meeting in a 2020 Senate report again, implying it shows the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. The Trump campaign ended the meeting after a few minutes and rebuffed efforts for a follow-up.

And if the Russians did steal the Democratic National Committee emails and colluded with the Trump campaign, why didnt Russia use this meeting to give those emails to the Trump campaign instead of a Clinton file prepared by Clintons subcontractor? The obvious answer is that the Clinton dirt was just a prop for a Fusion GPS setup meant to put Donald Trump Jr. in a room with a Russian.

The New York Times wrote of this theory advanced in the report:

The Intelligence Committee sought to track calls between Mr. Trump and Roger J. Stone Jr. an adviser to the Trump campaign who was in contact with Guccifer 2.0, the online pseudonym for Russian intelligence operatives dumping the Democratic emails in an effort to discover what Mr. Stone might have told Mr. Trump about the hacked emails.

In written answers to Mr. Mueller, Mr. Trump said he could not recall discussing WikiLeaks with Mr. Stone, a response challenged in the Senate report. The committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his Campaign about Stones access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions, the report said.

But when one drills into the documents, Stones contacts with Guccifer 2.0 dont appear to exceed a single exchange, which was about publicly available information. As I wrote here, Stone is just a fool who lies about gossiping. He dressed up (incorrect) speculation about the WikiLeaks dumps as though he had inside knowledge. He didnt.

Trump denies any recollection of speaking with Stone about the WikiLeaks document dumps. If he did, all Stone had to offer was the same idle speculation anyone reading public accounts might engage in.

Stone also had virtually nothing to do with WikiLeaks in spite of his braggadocio to the contrary. According to a recent Business Insider article, Stone sent WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a Twitter message in spring 2016. That has since been characterized as a source of inside knowledge by Stone about the Clinton emails. But theres no evidence that WikiLeaks told him anything that wasnt already public knowledge.

To understand the absurdity of the Senate committee pushing the Roger Stone-Russia connection, one must first understand that Stone is a wannabe insider. In a way, Stones arrest was the fulfillment of his dream to be relevant to the grand drama of the Russia controversy.

Although the report mentions Stone a whopping 113 times, its forced to admit that Stone really didnt know anything that wasnt already public. One bullet reads, The Committee could not reliably determine the extent of authentic, non-public knowledge about WikiLeaks that Stone obtained and shared with the Campaign. Its telling that the Senate Intelligence Committee would dignify the sordid and irrelevant Roger Stone story with any attention at all.

Dont forget a question Sperry posed: Did Robert Mueller Tap Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to Assist His Anti-Trump Investigation? Recall that after the election, the get-Trump movement raised millions of dollars to continue funding Fusion GPS.

Then, in a particularly tell-tale sign of Fusions involvement in the Mueller report, their company name does not appear a single time in that report. Only a party interested in protecting Fusion GPS could produce an extensive report on the Russian collusion hoax without mentioning the firm that was behind it all.

The Senate report mentions Fusion GPS a mere two times in spite of reporting extensively on Fusion GPS-connected events. That leads one to again wonder whether Fusion GPS might have had editorial input in the Senate report.

Adam Mill is a pen name. He works in Kansas City, Missouri as an attorney specializing in labor and employment and public administration law. Adam has contributed to The Federalist, American Greatness, and The Daily Caller.

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3 Pieces Of Recycled Collusion Garbage In The Senate Intelligence Report - The Federalist

When Donald Trump traveled to Moscow in November 1996, looking for real estate development opportunities, he didnt get a hotel deal in Moscow, but he may have found a new woman, and the Russian government probably knew about it, according to the Senate Intelligence Committees remarkable new report on the committees three and a half year investigation into Trump and Russia.

Trump met the Russian woman through his business connections at a party at a luxury hotel in Moscow, and the two apparently had a brief affair, at a time when Trump was married to his second wife, Marla Maples. The Senate report has redacted the womans name and blacked out her face in photos taken of her with Trump at the time and provided to the committee. But the report explains in detail how Russian intelligence operatives keep track of the sexual activities of visiting foreign business executives, and notes that the Moscow-based U.S. businessman who introduced Trump to the woman probably told Russian government officials about it.

The report reveals the true nature of the counterintelligence threat posed by a president willing and eager to accept the help of a foreign adversary to win American elections.

The story of Trumps alleged Moscow affair is in keeping with the bipartisan and comprehensive nature of the Senate report, which is at turns both reassuring and alarming. While it debunks the so-called Steele Dossier, which was highlighted by a wild accusation that Trump had two women urinate on his bed in his Moscow hotel room in 2013, the Senate report examines in detail the less tawdry, but far more plausible, story that Trump had a brief affair on his earlier trip to Moscow and the Russians knew about it.

In fact, the Senate report dismisses many of the most outrageous accusations involving Trump and Russia even as it provides overwhelming and damning evidence of Russias efforts to intervene in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump win and the Trump campaigns eagerness to embrace the Russian intervention.

But the Senate report goes much further than election interference and provides the first detailed examination of the broader and complex network of relationships between Trump, his ever-shifting circle of personal and business associates, and a series of Russian oligarchs and other Russian and Ukrainian figures with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. In the process, the report provides badly needed context for the events of 2016 and beyond. Above all, it reveals the true nature of the counterintelligence threat posed by a president willing and eager to accept the help of a foreign adversary to win American elections.

Since its August 18 release, the Senate report actually the fifth and final volume of the committees massive opus on Trump and Russia has been overshadowed by both the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and as a result, it has received far less attention from the press and the public than it deserves.

But the Senate report is particularly significant now, as the 2020 general election campaign intensifies and Trump and his supporters continue to deny that Russia tried to help him win in 2016 and that Moscow is trying to do so again this year. In recent days, John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, has said that the DNI will stop in-person briefings for Congress about election interference, angering congressional Democratic leaders who charge that Ratcliffe and the Trump administration are trying to keep the public in the dark.

But the Senate report cuts through the political noise with clear and unequivocal language to explain what happened in 2016.

At nearly 1,000 pages, the Senate report is by far the best and most thorough examination of the Trump-Russia story to date, and puts the narrower and more legalistic Mueller Report to shame. Robert Mueller, the former FBI director appointed in 2017 to be special counsel to investigate the Trump-Russia case, kept his focus on gathering evidence for specific criminal prosecutions; the Senate report shows that he missed the forest for the trees.

The Senate report itself is critical of Muellers narrow approach and chides him and his team for having failed to grasp the true nature of the national security threat posed by Russias intervention in 2016. The report complains that Mueller failed to continue the FBIs original counterintelligence investigation once the FBI handed off the broader Trump-Russia case. Instead, the special counsel abandoned the counterintelligence portions of the case and focused instead only on elements of the case that could result in criminal prosecutions.

Over the course of its investigation, the [special counsel] successfully secured numerous criminal indictments and convictions, the Senate report states. While criminal prosecutions are a vital tool in upholding our nations laws, protecting our democratic system from foreign interference is a broader national security mission that must be appropriately balanced with the pursuit of criminal prosecutions. It is the committees view that this balance was not achieved. Russian interference with the U.S. electoral process was inherently a counterintelligence matter and one not well-suited to criminal prosecutions.

The Senate report is most remarkable for its bipartisan nature. It was produced by a Republican-controlled committee, but the report almost never seems to pull its punches aimed at any of its targets. It is unsparing in its description of Trump and his campaign aides as eager to reach out for Russian help in 2016, but is equally tough in its criticism of the FBI for its missteps in its subsequent investigation of Trump and Russias intervention in the election. Along the way, each episode is recounted in exhaustive detail, and the result is that the reader is left with a clear understanding of the relative significance of the different chapters of the Trump-Russia case. That is a relief after years of partisanship and polarization have skewed the publics understanding of the case.

In fact, the Senate Intelligence Committees report is a throwback to an earlier era of congressional investigations in which bipartisanship was the rule, not the exception. The report is so thick with research and evidence that the letters from Republican and Democratic senators on the committee, attached at the end of the report and arguing over the reports meaning, seem trivial by contrast.

Perhaps the only significance of the attached letter from the Republican senators is the name of one senator who didnt sign it: Richard Burr of North Carolina, who until recently was the committees chair. Burr was forced to step aside in May, after the disclosure that he was under investigation for stock sales he made before the American public knew the extent of the likely economic threat posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. But by that time, the committees work on the Trump-Russia case was virtually complete. In hindsight, Burr appears to have played a key role in protecting the committees investigation from excessive partisan influence.

The independence of the committees investigation is evident in its clear and concise conclusions.

The committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president, the report states. Moscows intent was to harm the Clinton campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process.

The committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president.

The GRU, a Russian intelligence service, conducted the hacks and then used a false cyber front to transfer data to WikiLeaks, which then published the Clinton-related documents at key moments in the 2016 campaign, according to the report. The U.S. media obligingly wrote stories based on the documents, without aggressively pursuing evidence that the leaks were the product of a Russian cyberattack.

The report states that while the GRU and WikiLeaks were releasing hacked documents, the Trump campaign sought to maximize the impact of those materials to aid Trumps electoral prospects. To do so, the Trump Campaign took actions to obtain advance notice about WikiLeaks releases of Clinton emails; took steps to obtain inside information about the content of releases once WikiLeaks began to publish stolen information; created messaging strategies to promote and share the materials in anticipation of and following their release; and encouraged further theft of information and continued leaks.

One of the most intriguing sections in the report deals with the relationship between Paul Manafort, the onetime Trump campaign chair, and a Russian intelligence officer. Indeed, the Manafort section of the report is a prime example of how the Senate investigators brought fresh eyes to a well-known episode in the Trump-Russia case and, unlike Mueller, found new information by examining it as a counterintelligence matter.

In March 2016, longtime international lobbyist Paul Manafort joined the Trump campaign and by May was named the campaigns chair. Manafort offered to work for Trump for free.

Russias President Vladimir Putin (L) talks to Rusal President and Management Board Member Oleg Deripaska at the 2017 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit at Da Nang, Vietnam on Nov. 10, 2017.

Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev/TASS via Getty Images

But Manafort came to the Trump campaign with a lot of baggage and was facing a desperate financial squeeze. He had spent years working for Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin, who had tasked him to conduct influence operations in countries where Deripaska had major business interests. Deripaska also introduced Manafort to Ukrainian oligarchs and eventually Manafort went to work for Ukraines pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych until he was ousted from power in 2014 in the wake of Ukraines Maidan revolution.

By 2016, Manafort was caught up in a fight with Deripaska over an investment that had gone sour, and he saw his new position with the Trump campaign as a lifeline to help him resolve the situation. Once on the campaign, Manafort quickly sought to leverage his position to resolve his multi-million dollar foreign disputes and obtain new work in Ukraine and elsewhere, the Senate report concluded.

One of Manaforts closest aides during his time in Ukraine was Konstantin Kilimnik, who the Senate report identifies as a Russian intelligence officer. Kilimnik also served as Manaforts liaison with Deripaska.

While he was working for Trump during the 2016 campaign, Manafort stayed in contact with Kilimnik and gave him the Trump campaigns internal polling data, which showed that the key to defeating Clinton was to drive up negative attitudes about her among voters.

The Mueller report found that Manafort had shared Trump polling data with Kilimnik, but didnt examine why he had done so. The Senate report says that the intelligence committee obtained some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected to the GRUs hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 election. The report adds that this information suggests that a channel for coordination on the GRU hack operation may have existed through Kilimnik. The report adds that in interviews with Muellers prosecution team, Manafort lied consistently about one issue in particular: his interactions with Kilimnik. Manafort decided to face more severe criminal penalties rather than provide complete answers about his interactions with Kilimnik. The Manafort-Kilimnik relationship, the Senate report concludes, represents the single most direct tie between senior Trump campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services.

The Senate report is filled with such rich details, shedding new light on the wide cast of characters surrounding both Trump and Putin, and the end result is an engrossing tale of modern intelligence and of lust, avarice, squalid opportunism, and incompetence worthy of John le Carr. With its depth of research, layered with an understanding of a complex series of personal networks in both the United States and Russia, the Senate report has done what none of the previous investigations have achieved. It has brought the Trump-Russia story to life.

The rest is here:

Senate Report Shows What Mueller Missed About Trump and Russia - The Intercept

"Over 800,000 kids go missing in the U.S. every year! Child sex trafficking is the REAL pandemic. #SaveTheChildren #SaveOurChildren #ChildLivesMatter #Pedogate #Pedowood"

If you've been on social media in the past month or two, you've likely seen memes or posts to this effect. And if you're a person with a conscience, it likely caught your eye. Children being trafficked for sexthat's horrible!

Yes, it is. It's absolutely horrible. Child sex trafficking is basically the worst thing human beings can do, no question. But what do those #Pedogate and #Pedowood hashtags mean?

Yes, those. Unfortunately, they point directly to a QAnon-perpetuated conspiracy theory in which the world is being controlled by an elite global cabal of pedophilic Hollywood celebrities and high-level politicians (including Tom Hanks, Oprah, Hillary Clinton, and more) who secretly traffick, abuse, and torture children so they can harvest a fear-induced hormone in their blood to make adrenocrhome, which they consume to keep them young and/or imbibe during their drug-crazed Satanic rituals.

What?! That's crazy.

Yes, it is. It's absolutely crazy. But there are a baffling number of people who believe it, including people who will likely soon be serving in Congress. Many of these people are sharing the #SaveOurChildren and #ChildLivesMatter hashtags right along with #Pedowood and #Pedogate. They conflate this huge number of missing kids with the issue of child sex trafficking, and then point to the celebrity/politician cabal conspiracy theory in the same breath, as if it's all the same thing.

It is not.

The reality is that child sex trafficking is a multi-billion dollar, heinous, disgusting, global industrybut it's not new. It's not a sudden and massive crisis that "the media" is ignoring or that governments and NGOs aren't addressing. Unfortunately, QAnon believers have pushed a lot of misinformation and misleading information into the awareness surrounding this issue that needs to be corrected.

To get to the heart of what child sex trafficking really looks likeand to be thorough in the debunking of QAnon's child trafficking theorieswe spoke with organizations whose work centers around stopping trafficking and protecting missing and exploited children.

A common question people who have been sucked in by the QAnon world ask is: How do you know it's not true if it's never been investigated?

Some things are simply too ridiculous to be entertained, which honestly should be the case with the QAnon cabal theory. But since it's somehow slipped into the mainstream, it has to be addressed head on.

So I swallowed my pride and directly asked anti-trafficking organizationsthe people who specialize in this subject and are intimately involved in investigationswhether or not there was any truth to the theory. It was humiliating, frankly, but I straight up asked them: "It's a known fact that child abusers often hide in plain sight and that high-profile people can be abusers. Based on your work, have you seen any evidence that there is a global cabal of pedophile elites who traffick children in a coordinated underground effort to harvest adrenochrome?"

Across the board, the answer was "No."

I also asked this question: "Pedophiles and traffickers sometimes use coded symbols and code words in their communications with one another. Is there any official documentation that the words 'pizza' or 'hot dog' or 'sauce' have been used for such a purpose? (Or more directly, are the Wikileaks emails evidence of child sex trafficking?)"

Again, the answer was no. Of course.

(For those new to Conspiracyland, the code words question came from the claim QAnon folks make that the FBI has a list of code words and symbols that support the Pizzagate theory, which posits that Hillary Clinton and associates were discussing their dastardly pedophile deeds in code wordspizza, sauce, etc.via emails released by Wikileaks. The FBI has documented known pedophile symbols, but none of the supposed code words in the Wikileaks emails are listed among them And the Washington D.C. police have called Pizzagate "a fictitious online conspiracy theory.")

Erin Williamson, VP of Global Programs for Love146an organization that has been working with sex trafficking prevention and survivor care for 17 yearssays that conspiracy theories like this just makes more work for the people trying to do the work of educating the public.

"If somebody comes to know trafficking and has no preconceived notions of what trafficking is, you're starting with a blank slate," she says. "You can build from zero. But if someone's coming to the trafficking movement or approaching this issue with preconceived incorrect information, then first you have to get them to the point where they realize all of the information that they've learned thus far is inaccurate before you can start building the accurate information. And it just is going to take so much longer to get people to a point where they actually understand what this accurately looks like."

A national organization that asked to remain anonymous (understandable, considering how my own inbox fills with people accusing me of being a pedophile each time I write about how QAnon is bunk) told Upworthy, "Questions like this distract from the realities of how sex trafficking actually occurs. Offenders do often communicate in code but we haven't seen any such official documentation and don't consider the Wikileaks emails credible. Unfounded conspiracy theories minimize, distract and draw valuable resources away from the tireless work being done by child protection advocates on the ground."

The Polaris Project, which runs the National Trafficking Hotline, offered an example of how resources get usurped by these theories. Last month, a rumor started circulating in the QAnon sphere that the Wayfair website was being used to traffick children because someone spotted an strangely expensive cabinet with a female name.

"The Wayfair theory resulted in online harassment and privacy intrusions of people mistakenly believed to be victims, as well as broad sharing of online sexual abuse material of actual victims who have not been connected in any way to Wayfair," Polaris told Upworthy. "This harm is real for survivors who want to maintain their privacy, victims who are being re-exploited by broader distribution of their abuse materials, or bystanders whose lives can be overwhelmed by the actions of potentially well-meaning online communities."

In addition, Polaris adds, "Conspiracies distract from the more disturbing but simple realities of how sex trafficking actually works, and how we can prevent it."

But isn't awareness about child sex trafficking a good thing, even if it's not all factual?

Love146's Erin Williamson says no.

"In the short term, it might make people aware that there is an issue of child trafficking that exists," she says."But if that doesn't lead to somebody actually engaging with the issue and taking effort to join the movement to actually effectively eradicate the issue, then no. It's harmful. It's just a bunch of white noise that's sucking up resources."

"The question really is how many of the people are going to, as a result of this, actually have enough concern about child trafficking that they do more research, effectively realize what the issue is about, and then consistently or actively engage in addressing it," she adds. "And I don't think we fully know the percentage. My concern is that that percentage will be pretty low."

Perpetuating these kooky cabal theories does more to hurt the child sex trafficking cause than to help it.

But what about all those missing children then?

Every organization I spoke to pointed out that there are no hard and fast numbers because there's no way to know exactly how many kids are being trafficked or exploited beyond what gets reported. We know that a lot of exploitation doesn't get reported, but most kids who go missing do get reported somewhere.

Two organizations pointed me to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) for missing children statistics. The NCMEC states, "According to the FBI, in 2019 there were 421,394 NCIC entries for missing children. In 2018, the total number of missing children entries into NCIC was 424,066." They clarify that this number represents individual reports of missing children, not the number of missing children themselves. If a child runs away multiple times in a year, each instance is counted separately and included in the yearly total, so the total number of missing children is likely less than those total numbers.

That's a lot of children; however, the vast majority of missing kids make it back home pretty quickly. Think of kids who run away to a friend's house and the parents can't find them, kids who get lost temporarily, or kids who get taken or not returned by a parent in a custody dispute.

The kids who don't return home and who are at risk of exploitation are where NCMEC comes in. In 2019, they assisted law enforcement and families with more than 29,000 cases. Less than one percent of those were non-family abductions, so the idea that loads of kids are just being snatched out of nowhere and sold for sex is totally inaccurate. In addition, NCMEC reports that 91 percent of those cases (around 26,300) were endangered runaways, and of those kids, 1 in 6 were likely victims of child sex trafficking. One is too many, of course, and these numbers are significant. But they're nowhere near 800,000.

Statistics come in various forms, of course. The Polaris Project, which runs the National Trafficking Hotline, tells Upworthy, " In 2019, the National Human Trafficking Hotline reported 2,582 underaged individuals involved in trafficking situations (all types)." However, they note, "It is incredibly important to note that these figures cannot be construed as prevalence."

Again, one child is too many, and these statistics only represent a fraction of the problem. Sharing these numbers is not meant to downplay the issue at all, but rather to explain that there's no real basis for the idea that 800,000 kids go missing and get sucked into child sex trafficking each year in the U.S.

So where did that number come from? There were some articles in the early 2000's that cited numbers close around 800,000. But the most recent statistics are shared above.

Numbers are always a bit fuzzy. What we do know is that children are being trafficked and exploited. Far too many, far too often.

Child sex trafficking is a complex industry. Sometimes it looks like children being physically transported place to place and being bought and sold for sex. Sometimes it's kids being used to create child pornography. Sometimes it's a drug-addicted parent renting out their children to get money for their addiction. Sometimes it's teens recruiting other teens to engage in sex or create sexual images for money.

Love146's Williamson explained that trafficking can look very different in different parts of the world.

"We run a program in the Philippines, and most of our children come into that program under 10," says Williamson.. "We've accepted kids under the age of one into that program. In those situations, it's really familial a lot of times, and a lot of what is happening is happening over webcams. You'll also see reports of labor trafficking happening in other countries at very young ages.

"What we see in the United States and what we're working with is different. We're not seeing as many under 10 year olds trafficked. I'm not saying it doesn't happenit does. But more of what we're seeing are adolescents. Preteen and teenagers who are being groomed and recruited, and while some is familial, a lot is not familial."

Williamson explains that the term "runaway" is a bit of a misnomer because some runaways are teens who get pulled away from home by traffickers in sneaky ways.

"Part of what traffickers do is they recruit and groom," she says. "They engage in a relationship for the purposes of exploiting this kid for trafficking. So it can appear that a kid is running away, or choosing to leave their house willingly, but it's actually an intentionality on the part of the traffickers to make it appear that way...to make it appear that way to law enforcement, to the parents, and to the child themselves. So the child says things like, 'I chose to go, I chose to meet up with so and so who I met online, or to meet up with so and so who I met in the park.' So again, even when we talk about the term runawaythey're really being groomed and recruited away from their home."

One common theme among the organizations I communicated with is that there are well-known conditions that greatly increase a child's chances of being trafficked.

Polaris Project says:

The anonymous organization also explained that certain conditions make kids more vulnerable. "Certain kids who are homeless or runaways, belong to certain minority groups, and who have contact with the child welfare system are particularly vulnerable to this type of exploitation."

Polaris also points out, "In the case of child sex trafficking in particular, the vast majority of victims know their traffickers and trust them. They may be professional traffickers who carefully groom young people on line and lure them into trafficking situations. They may well also be their parents, or other family members or trusted friends."

Learning about the realities of child sex trafficking is the first step. The issue is complex and multi-faceted, but just because it's not simple or easy to solve doesn't mean there's nothing we can do.

One active thing we can do is what trafficking looks like.

"Trafficking is rarely perpetrated by a total stranger who kidnaps children," says Polaris Project. "What we frequently see through the Trafficking Hotline are stories of people being trafficked by intimate partners, family members, and others that they know and may even love and trust."

We can also make sure kids we are in contact with know that we are safe people they can go to if they are in an unsafe situation.

"When we talk to kids, it is always the little things that made the difference," says Love 146's Williamson. "It is always the neighbor who asked how they were doing, who then they realized was a safe person, that they could eventually talk to about what was happening to them in their house. It is always the teacher who they would curse out who would say 'I'm still here for you whenever you need something.' It is the little things that make a difference in a child's life."

Williamson also points out that the systemic issues we debate over in our society also impact child sex trafficking, and addressing those issues will help reduce the vulnerabilities that lead to exploitation.

"For most of us who have been working in this field long enough, there's now a general recognition that we're not going to arrest and prosecute our way out of this issue," she says, "We've tried that. That isn't happening. We need to go upstream. We need to deal with all of the things that make people vulnerablethe inequalities, the racism, the sexism, the homophobia. We need to address all of these issues that have all sorts of consequences, of which trafficking is one of them. It takes a while to get somebody to understand how this is all interrelated.

So when I hear somebody say, 'Black Lives Matter? What about children's lives? There's been a couple of quotes like that. 'Why are we marching for Black Lives Matter? Where's the outcry for trafficked children?' and comparing those two. First of all, this is not a dichotomywe should be addressing all of this. And my thing is when you look at the statistics, especially here in the United States, trafficking is disproportionately affecting children of color. And so racism is at the heart of both of these issues, when you're talking about the disproportionality of violence against people of color. So it's not an either/or. It's actually a yes/and. Which is why we have to go upstream and start addressing some of these systemic issues."

To learn more about the real issue of child sex trafficking, check out these organizations' websites:

Polaris Project

Love146

The Exodus Road

ECPAT-USA

Child Rescue Coalition

Thorn

Operation Underground Railroad

International Justice Mission

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