Judging from Verma’s message to Posobiec and considering the larger context of newly troubled Indo-US ties, it’s possible that he intends to introduce the narrative that India is “meddling” in US affairs in order to complicate the FBI chief’s trip.

Top conservative influencer Jack Posobiec tweeted out a private message that he received on Friday from a Washington Post (WaPo) journalist asking him to comment on an organization called Disinformation Lab whose content he allegedly shared in the past. According to Pranshu, who Posobiec determined is Pranshu Verma, that group “is actually run by an Indian Intelligence Officer”. The story that he’s writing is “sensitive”, he claimed, so he requested Posobiec’s response by the end of the day.

Verma also claimed in his message that Disinformation Lab “combines fact based research with unsubstantiated claims to paint U.S. government figures, researchers, Indian American human-rights activists and international humanitarian groups as part of a conspiracy, purportedly led by global Islamic groups and the billionaire George Soros, to undermine India.” What he didn’t disclose is that the FBI chief will visit India on 11-12 December to discuss the US’ charges against an unnamed Indian official.

The Justice Department accused that unnamed individual and an Indian drug trafficker less than two weeks ago of conspiring to assassinate a Delhi-designated terrorist-separatist in June around the same time that another such designated person was killed in Canada. The FBI chief is expected to share the US’ evidence in support of those claims while his counterparts will share theirs in support of why the supposed target was designated as a terrorist in the first place. Here are some background briefings:

* 19 September: “There’s A Lot More To The Indian-Canadian Dispute Than An Alleged Assassination”

* 1 October: “India’s Top Diplomat Shared Some Dark Truths About Canada”

* 23 November: “India’s Honeymoon With The West Might Finally Be Over”

* 30 November: “Korybko To Mihir Sharma: The Anglosphere, Not India, Is To Blame For Troubled Bilateral Ties”

* 7 December: “Reuters Doesn’t Really Understand Why India Is Opposed To Sikh Separatism”

To summarize for the reader’s convenience, India considers it as a betrayal of trust for the Anglosphere (particularly the US and Canada but also to a lesser extent the UK) to host Delhi-designated terrorists-separatists who threaten their country with impunity. The two public accusations that India plotted to assassinate such figures are likely part of a power play by the West’s liberal–globalist policymaking faction amidst the incipient Sino-US thaw in which ties with India have now become a bargaining chip.  

WaPo is regarded as one of the aforesaid faction’s mouthpieces, which explains why Verma was tasked with dropping his story about Disinformation Lab on the eve of the FBI chief’s visit. He hasn’t released it at the time of this piece’s publication, but judging from his message to Posobiec and considering the larger context, it’s possible that he intends to introduce the narrative that India is “meddling” in US affairs. That could in turn complicate the FBI chief’s visit and/or prompt him to discuss this with his hosts.

Posobiec retweeted one of Disinformation Lab’s threads from a month ago arguing that WaPo is indeed an instrument of shadowy policymaking forces. Moreover, their latest piece of investigative journalism from two weeks back makes the case that the individual at the center of the Indo-US scandal is those same forces’ proxy, so WaPo’s motive for defaming them is self-explanatory. If they go through with their planned information provocation, then bilateral ties might become even more difficult to repair.

(The article was published on korybko.substack.com on December 09, 2023 and has been reproduced here)