Crypto Think Tank Chief Charged With Breaking Campaign Finance Rules

Here is more from the Wall Street Journal:

Federal prosecutors on Thursday charged crypto lobbyist Michelle Bond with conspiring with her romantic partner, former FTX executive Ryan Salame, to illegally fund her failed 2022 congressional bid.

Bond, a lawyer who previously worked as an executive at a digital-assets trade group, faces four campaign-finance offenses, including conspiring to cause unlawful political contributions.  

Bond, 45 years old, now runs a crypto think tank called Digital Future. At the time she entered the congressional primary, she was serving as chief executive of the Association for Digital Asset Markets, a trade group for the digital-assets space. 

 

Digital Future describes itself as "a public policy and advocacy think tank dedicated to promoting the development of the next generation of the financial services industry."

FBI Raids Home of Former Think Tank Chief

Here is more:

Agents of the FBI have raided and searched the Virginia home of Dmitri Simes, a prominent political commentator and author who hosts a current-affairs program on Russia’s state-run Channel One television, the newspaper Rappahannock News reported on August 16.

The FBI told the paper the search began on August 13 but declined to comment further, RFE/RL's Russian Service reported.

Simes told the paper he is currently out of the country, but was "puzzled and concerned" by the FBI's action. He told the Russian state news agency TASS on August 16 that the reports that FBI agents were at his home were true, although he had not been officially notified.

Simes was born in Moscow in 1947 and emigrated to the United States in 1973. He served as an informal adviser to former U.S. President Richard Nixon and regularly traveled with Nixon to Russia and other former Soviet countries.

In 1994, Nixon named him to head the Center for the National Interest, which at the time was called the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom. Simes retired from the position in 2022.

Simes also advised the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump and arranged an important 2016 foreign-policy speech in which Trump outlined a vision for greater cooperation with Russia.

 

Earlier this month, the FBI raided the home of Scott Ritter, a former United Nations weapons inspector and convicted sex predator who has collaborated with isolationist organizations such as the Ron Paul Institute and the Quincy Institute.

Think Tank Quickies (#501)

• Trump 2024 vs. Project 2025, via NY Mag.
• Heritage Foundation signs on as RNC convention sponsor.
  
• 4 think tanks influencing Trump's energy agenda (Heritage Foundation, CEI, IER, and TPPF). 
• Heritage Foundation recommends punishing China for Covid.
  
• New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI): "A think tank dedicated to the study of complex systems."
• Flashback: Inside a Trump-era purge of military scientists at a legendary think tank.
• Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said that the rising right wing is "in the process of the second American Resolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."
• Mark Meadows' Conservative Partnership Institute was accused of improperly paying his legal bills.
• Boutique investment bank Centerview recently hired Richard Haass, former head of CFR, as a senior counselor. 
• The US Air Force recently asked the RAND Corporation to assess whether AI tools could provide options to a "space warfighter" dealing with an incoming threat to a satellite.