Tag Archives: Just The News

While We Were Distracted

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On Sunday, Just the News posted an article about the latest developments in the Biden family scandals.

The article lists the latest updates:

1. Hunter Biden did do something wrong

2. Viktor Shokin was a threat to Burisma

3. Joe Biden changed “official” US policy

4. Joe Biden met with Hunter Biden’s business partners

5. Hunter Biden did make millions from China

6. Joe Biden did get financial benefits from his family’s ventures

The article provides details for each one of these claims.

The most recent bit of new evidence is included in the sixth statement on the list:

“In 2018, James Biden received $600,000 in loans from, Americore—a financially distressed and failing rural hospital operator. According to bankruptcy court documents, James Biden received these loans ‘based upon representations that his last name, ‘Biden,’ could ‘open doors’ and that he could obtain a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections,” Comer said in an Oversight Committee post to X. Comer provided bankruptcy court documents and a record of the check exchanged between the brothers.

“On March 1, 2018, Americore wired a $200,000 loan into James and Sara Biden’s personal bank account – not their business bank account. On the same day, James Biden wrote a $200,000 check from this same personal bank account to Joe Biden,” Comer added.

While significant circumstantial evidence built up over time that Joe Biden benefited from his family’s endeavors while he was the Vice President, and afterwards a public figure, this is the first piece of concrete evidence that Joe Biden recieved direct payments from family members. 

Congress has a copy of that check. It remains to be seen if any members of the Biden family will be held responsible for their actions. We all need to remember that when large amounts of money are exchanged it usually involves the transfer of goods or services. Since we know no goods were transferred, what services were offered?

 

Hope For Education In Texas

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On Sunday, Just the News reported that the Texas Senate has passed two education bills that will increase funding for public education and expand school choice.

The problem in public education is not entirely due to funding. In 2013, AEI posted the following graph:

As someone who graduated from high school as part of the largest high school graduation class in American history, I understand the need for buildings, teachers, and administrators. I went to three different junior high schools as the community was building schools to accommodate the baby boomers as they went through high school. I was part of the first high school class in my high school to graduate on single sessions in a long time, and even at that, there were almost 1,000 students in my graduating class. However, we are no longer seeing the student population growth that we saw in the 1960’s. I am all in favor of keeping the number of teachers high–smaller classes are a good thing, but it is time that we took a serious look at cutting the number of administrators.

Just the News reports:

SB 1 creates education savings accounts of up to $8,000 per student and gives Texas families “the power to determine the best school for their child, with their tax dollars,” Creighton (Senator Brandon Creighton) explains.

Creighton said on the Senate floor ahead of the vote that, “Senate Bill 1 is not merely legislation, it’s a pledge to Texas parents, a testament to our trust in their decision-making capabilities and investment in the dreams of our young Texans respecting their individual specific education needs.”

After more than eight hours of debate, the Senate passed SB 1 by a vote of 18-13. Sen. Robert Nichols, R–Jacksonville, was the sole Republican to vote against it.

The bill heads to the House Education Opportunity & Enrichment Committee.

SB 2 allocates record funding for public school education, including increasing the basic allotment for per-student funding and giving raises to teachers across the board.

It passed nearly unanimously by a vote of 30-1. It was received in the House but has not yet been assigned to a committee.

Let’s free education in America!

Should American Politicians Support Terrorism?

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The political left has long supported Palestine at the expense of Israel. We would do well to remember that there never actually was a Palestine–it was the name given to Israel by the Romans to insult the Jews.

Consider the following quote:

“We considered ourselves Jordanian until the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Then all of the sudden we were Palestinians – they removed the star from the Jordanian flag and all at once we had a Palestinian flag.” ~ Walid Shoebat

Walid Shoebat is also credited with saying:

One day during the 1960’s I went to bed a Jordanian Muslim, and when I woke up the next morning, I was informed that I was a Palestinian.

Keep that in mind as you read today’s news.

Just the News recently posted an article about the American political left’s embrace of Iran and Palestine. After what happened this past weekend, they might want to reconsider that embrace.

The article notes:

As evidence of civilian atrocities mounted, President Joe Biden emerged in public to unequivocally denounce the Hamas terror attacks as “pure unadulterated evil” but his repudiation cannot hide the long embrace by his party’s liberals of the two main actors behind the staggering violence that rocked the Middle East: the political and military leadership in Palestine and their backers in Iran.

Even as American hostages remained in peril, the beheaded torsos of innocent civilians were collected from Israeli streets and Hamas and Tehran celebrated the bloodletting, many liberals in America were still trying to express empathy for the attackers.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib flew a Palestinian flag outside her official congressional office, while Rep. Ilhan Omar suggested Israel’s counteroffensive might be a “war crime.” Biden’s secretary of state tweeted, then deleted a call for a “ceasefire” just as Israel ramped up its rescue missions. The U.S. Department of State’s Palestinian Affairs Office literally implored Israel to “refrain” from “retaliatory attacks” before reversing course. On the streets of liberal cities and the campuses of left-leaning universities like Harvard, many even suggested Israel deserved blame for Hamas’ attacks.

People who want to commit violence will always find an excuse.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is extremely insightful.

This Might Make Things Interesting

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On Friday, Just the News reported that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is expected to announce in early October that he is planning to run for President as an independent. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is currently polling at about 15 percent within the Democrat party. President Biden is currently polling at about 65 percent within the Democrat party.

The article reports:

He is expected to make the announcement on Oct. 9 at a Pennsylvania rally, Mediaite reported. An adviser to the presidential candidate said his decision stemmed from what he considered unfair practices by the Democratic National Committee to stifle his candidacy.

“Bobby feels that the DNC is changing the rules to exclude his candidacy so an independent run is the only way to go,” one campaign advisor told the outlet.

At present, Kennedy averages 14.9% support in the Democratic primary to Biden’s 65.0%, according to RealClearPolitics. Hollywood guru Marianne Williamson places third with 4.9%.

As far as the Democrat party election practices are concerned, many of those practices were put in place after the 1972 campaign of George McGovern. In the 1972 election, George McGovern received 17 Electoral College votes–from Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. Richard Nixon received 520 Electoral College votes. The Democrats learned that a far-left candidate would not win a national election and changed their primary process to prevent a far-left candidate from winning the nomination. That is why Bernie Sanders was locked out in 2016 and in 2020. Joe Biden ran as a moderate even though his administration has not governed that way.

I have no idea who Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., will take votes from. I do hope that he is provided with Secret Service Protection as soon as possible considering the family history. Some Republican never-Trumpers may vote for him because they think he is a moderate (he is not–read his statements of the environment and other issues); and some Democrats may vote for him because they agree with some of his liberal policies.

All things considered, 2024 is going to be an interesting election. We all need to pray for the safety of ALL the candidates.

 

Is The FBI Part Of The Problem Or Part Of The Solution?

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On Tuesday, Just the News reported that the FBI has denied a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from Just the News regarding voter registration fraud in Michigan.

The article reports:

According to the dozens of pages of police reports from the Muskegon Police Department and Michigan State Police, a firm called GBI Strategies was under scrutiny as an organization central to alleged voter registration fraud in the 2020 presidential election. The matter was initially investigated by city and state authorities before the FBI took over. 

Contacts between local law enforcement and the FBI continued into 2022 but there is no evidence of what happened after that in the memos obtained by Just the News through requests made under Michigan’s own Freedom of Information Act.

Last week, the FBI denied a Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts request from Just the News regarding records from the investigation into GBI Strategies.

If there is ‘nothing to see here,’ why are they hiding it?

The article continues:

The request sought “copies of all reports, documents, and records about GBI Strategies, including all communication and correspondence regarding investigations of GBI Strategies with Michigan government officials, city and state law enforcement agencies in Michigan, and all other state government officials and law enforcement agencies involved in investigations of GBI Strategies.”

The FBI’s response partially reads: “The material you requested is located in an investigative file which is exempt from disclosure.”

The FBI cited 5 U.S. Code § 552(b)(7)(A) for exempting disclosure of the records, specifically, “records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that the production of such law enforcement records or information … could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.”

The agency’s response continued: “The records responsive to your request are law enforcement records; there is a pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding relevant to these responsive records, and release of the information could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.”

Police from Michigan interviewed GBI Strategies employees in 2020 and cited specific instances of registrations that appeared suspicious or fraudulent, the previously obtained memos show. A Michigan State Police memo described the possible crime being investigated as “Election Fraud by Forgery.”

Distract, delay, and deny until the statute of limitations runs out. We have seen this play before.

The House Of Representatives Did Something Good For American Consumers

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On Friday, Just the News reported that the House of Representatives has passed H.R.1435.

This is the main part of the bill according to Congress.gov:

Basically this bill prevents the government from passing a law that would prohibit Americans from purchasing gas-powered vehicles. The bill is called the “Preserving Choice in Vehicle Purchases Act.”

All of the Democrats who voted cast votes against the bill. All of the Republicans who voted cast votes for the bill. I guess the Democrats only support choice when it comes to abortion.

 

The Laffer Curve At Work

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On Tuesday, Just the News posted the following headline:

Federal revenue falls $416 billion from this time last year despite passage of IRA

This is the Laffer Curve:

What is illustrates is the fact that after the government raises taxes past a certain amount, tax revenues fall. That is because the people whose taxes have been increased have more incentive to find ways to move their income to places that are taxed less.

For example, 93.1FMWIBC reported the following in April 2021:

Mr. Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden, routed their book and speech income through S corporations, according to tax returns the couple released this week. They paid income taxes on those profits, but the strategy let the couple avoid the 3.8% self-employment tax they would have paid had they been compensated directly instead of through the S corporations.

Questionable, but probably legal.

Just the News reports:

Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, told Just the News that some of the tax credits in the IRA, like the clean vehicle credit and solar tax credit, are in effect right now and will cost billions. “In the short term, the IRA is generating little new revenue because of the delays in implementing the 15% minimum tax so the green energy credits are costing taxpayers billions,” he said.

Hodge pointed out that the IRS enforcement plans were delayed because of the debt ceiling deal reached by President Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, adding that the IRS hasn’t fully implemented the 15% minimum corporate tax until the agency finalizes the enforcement rules.

“If we look at Treasury’s monthly report, the drop in individual income tax receipts is the biggest factor for the overall decline in federal receipts. They are down by $438 billion alone,” Hodge told Just the News.

“My guess is that much of that may be due to the slower economy and lower capital gains tax collections because of the slumping stock market. Corporate income taxes are higher than last year as are payroll taxes such as Social Security, so those are not a factor,” he added.

There is a tipping point. When corporate taxes get too high in America, corporations go elsewhere.

About Those RICO Laws…

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RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) Laws were originally put in place to deal with organized crime. I suspect that the people who put them in place never dreamed that organized crime would make its way to the White House.

On Tuesday, Just the News reported the following:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on Tuesday wrote to White House chief of staff Jeff Zients and Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding that the pair account for reports that a staffer in special counsel Jack Smith’s office repeatedly met with Biden White House officials.

Isn’t that special?

I thought that the purpose of the special counsel was to have an investigation free of interference from within the government.

The article notes:

“According to recent reporting, Jay Bratt—a Department of Justice employee and top aide to Special Counsel Jack Smith—met with White House officials multiple times, just weeks before Mr. Smith indicted former President Donald Trump,” Jordan (House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan) wrote to Zients. “This new information raises serious concerns regarding the potential for a coordinated effort between the Department and the White House to investigate and prosecute President Biden’s political opponents.”

The letter then proceeds to document the various meetings between Bratt and White House officials between 2021 and 2023. It further highlighted allegations that Bratt, in particular, “improperly pressured” a lawyer representing a Trump employee to cooperate with the Department of Justice’s prosecution of the former president.

The article concludes:

“These facts reinforce the serious concern that Mr. Smith is not running an impartial and unprejudiced investigation and prosecution,” Jordan insisted. “The Committee has a significant interest in examining how the Department runs its Special Counsel investigations to inform potential legislative reforms concerning the Department’s Special Counsel practices and operations.”

Jordan demanded that Zients and Garland provide the Judiciary Committee with documents related to Bratt’s myriad visits as well as any communications between the Department of Justice and the Biden White House related to Smith’s operations.

Does anyone believe that if President Biden were a Republican, he would still be in office?

A New Definition Of Security

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On Saturday, Just the News posted an article about a recent statement made by Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

The article reports:

Praising Biden’s historic green energy funding and 100% clean electricity goal by 2035, Granholm said “With all this electrification, we could slash our net crude oil imports by almost 60%, and that strengthens energy security.”

Granholm, who appeared with Vice President Kamala Harris also said Harris “has been amazing inside the White House as the champion for clean energy.” 

One of the most common critiques of Biden’s green agenda is that it has thus far achieved the opposite of energy security. Regulators claimed in May that more than 66% of the country is vulnerable to summer blackouts because of “new environmental rules” cracking down on fossil fuels. 

The regulators explained that the government is causing a spike in energy demand at a pace faster than renewables can match.

I don’t have a problem with cutting crude oil imports–if we open up American drilling and regain energy independence, we can be a net exporter of oil again. The world economy is based on oil. It is the commodity that fuels our manufacturing, our transportation, enables trade, and makes the lives of people who live in countries with ample energy much more pleasant. A number of European countries have switched away from green energy because they discovered that it could not meet the energy needs of their population.

The article also notes:

Center for Industrial Progress President and founder Alex Epstein wrote that “Joe Biden’s escalating bans on domestic fossil fuel production, combined with mandates of unreliable solar and wind overwhelmingly produced by unreliable China, are an existential threat to our energy security and therefore our national security.”

This isn’t the first time Granholm has made this claim. In April, she also stated of her trip to Japan that Biden’s green agenda will “address how the acceleration of the clean energy transition will help strengthen global energy security.”

Green energy is the modern equivalent of the perpetual motion machine. It’s a great idea, but I suspect that it will always remain just slightly out of reach.

At What Point Is It Time To Deal With The Lies?

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Just the News posted an article on Monday listing five lies that President Biden has told about his business dealings. The headline is more polite than I am, referring to the lies as ‘stories that turned out to be untrue.’

The article lists the five lies:

    1. Joe Biden never discussed business with his son or family.
    2. Joe Biden never met with his son’s business partners.
    3. The Biden family did not get money from China.
    4. Hunter Biden “has done nothing wrong.” 
    5. The Hunter Biden laptop that emerged late in the 2020 election was Russian disinformation.

All of these stories are in conflict with what is currently known about the Biden family’s business dealings.

The article notes:

Testimony from two family friends, Rob Walker and Devon Archer, as well as evidence from Hunter Biden’s laptop seized by the FBI in 2019 confirm that President Biden in fact had frequent contact with Hunter Biden’s business associates, specifically with executives from a Chinese energy company tied to the Communist party and whose top executive Patrick Ho was convicted of bribery in the United States.

…“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent (sic) some time together,” Pozharskyi wrote Hunter Biden.

File

04_17_2015 – Email from Pozharksyi to RHB – Meeting for coffee .pdf

Walker, a longtime Biden family friend and business associate, also told the FBI in an interview that Joe Biden personally attended meetings with Hunter Biden’s partners, including one with China-based CEFC Energy and its top executive, according to testimony by IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, the agency’s supervisory agent for the Biden case.

…As previously reported by Just the News, in 2017, Hunter Biden received $1 million from “a company he formed with the CEO of a Chinese business conglomerate,” according to the agreement. The next year, he would receive even more: $2.6 million from the same source.

…The IRS whistleblower, as well as evidence first reported by Just the News from the Hunter Biden laptop, show Joe Biden’s son failed to pay taxes on $400,000 in income in 2014 from his job at Burisma in Ukraine. Prosecutors let the statute of limitations expire on that alleged crime, according to Shapley.

…Evidence that Shapley gave Congress also shows the FBI had authenticated the laptop in late 2019 and again in early 2020, well before the letter was released.

“We have no reason to believe there is anything fabricated nefariously on the computer and or hard drive,” stated a contemporaneous memo from 2020 summarizing the FBI’s authentication efforts. “There are emails and other items that corroborate the items on the laptop and hard drive.”

At least the Trump family had hotels, golf courses, and hotel rooms as businesses. The only business the Biden family seems to have had is influence peddling.

When The Shoe Is On The Other Foot

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When Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House, she did a number of things that set precedents for the future. She removed Republicans from committees, something that in the past had only been done by the party involved. She refused to allow some Republicans on the January 6th committee, again setting a precedent. Well, some of the precedents set by the January 6th committee are about to come back to haunt the Democrats.

On Sunday Just the News reported:

The precedent set by the House Jan. 6th Select Committee in obtaining relevant documents as evidence against former President Donald Trump and issuing subpoenas for their investigation could be a boon for Republicans in the congressional probe into the Biden family’s overseas business dealings.

The Jan. 6 panel demonstrated that it could conduct oversight and gain access to evidence and witnesses even as the Justice Department conducted a sprawling criminal probe into the same figures and issues, and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told Just the News he plans to ride those precedents.

“They set a lot of precedent during that Jan. 6 committee that I think they’re gonna regret with respect to this Biden investigation,” he told the Just the News, No Noise television show.

Comer and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan are currently investigating President Joe Biden’s possible involvement in Hunter’s foreign business deals. Biden has repeatedly said he had no knowledge or involvement with his son’s businesses, but documents and testimony given to the committee call those denials into question.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed David Weiss, U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, to special counsel on Friday. Weiss has been leading the investigation since 2019.

Just on the basis of what has come out in the press, how could anyone investigate Hunter Biden for four years and not come up with anything?

The article notes:

Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz told Just the News that making Weiss a special counsel will strengthen the congressional investigation into the extent of Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.

“I think it should increase the power of Congress to look into this,” he said during an interview on Friday. “I think it shows that there is still room for more investigation, and that Congress can play an important role in getting to the bottom of that.”

He noted that Congress has a “constitutional power to check and balance the executive and so the fact that there’s an ongoing investigation should not be an absolute barrier for Congress to do its job.”

Dershowitz said that Congress can insist on “subpoenaing prosecutors and then if they refuse, they can be held in contempt and it could go to the courts and we’ll see how the courts decide it.”

Please follow the link to read the entire article. If the Democrats choose to change the rules, the Republicans should embrace the change!

Full Steam Ahead–Right Over The Cliff

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On Sunday, Just the News posted the following headline:

Harsh reality: Midwest states’ infrastructure ‘below average’ for transition to electric vehicles

The article reports:

The Great Lakes states, let alone the nation, don’t have the infrastructure necessary for the transition to electric vehicles, a car search and research company reported.

BMW Group, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes-Benz Group and Stellantis NV announced Wednesday they’re collaborating to install 30,000 high-powered charge points in urban and highway locations, beginning in summer 2024, with private and public funding,

iSeeCars.com Executive Analyst Karl Brauer said it’s not enough.

The seven companies announced their venture, which should be established this year, would begin opening stations in summer 2024. The networks would be powered solely with renewable energy. All battery-powered electric vehicles that use Combined Charging System or North American Charging Standard will at least meet the U.S. National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program’s requirements.

Brauer told The Center Square in a statement July 26 that the most daunting challenge for the electric vehicle transition is the lack of charging infrastructure to satisfy the current 5% new vehicle market share of EV drivers.

If we don’t have enough charging stations when only 5% of cars are electric, how are we going to handle a situation where 70% or more of cars are electric? There is also the problem of electric cars and extremely cold weather. The batteries in electric cars lose their charge very quickly in cold weather. At least half of America experiences cold weather during the winter. I remember many New England winters where the temperature in January did not exceed 9 degrees. Upper Michigan also has extreme winter weather. Unless the technology is significantly improved, electric cars are not a good idea. Our power grid, which is not adequately protected against solar flares or EMP attacks can barely handle the load on peak days. Do you remember the residents of California being asked NOT to charge their cars because of an overtaxed electrical grid? Remember the winter brownouts in North Carolina last year?

Unless we admit that green energy is not a workable alternative to fossil fuel, we will become a third-world country with brownouts and limited access to electricity. Electric cars will only make that situation worse.

 

It’s Time To Let FISA Die–It Is Being Misused

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On Friday, Just the News posted an article about the misuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to spy on Americans.

The article reports:

The FBI improperly used a controversial surveillance tool on a United States senator, as well as multiple state officials, court documents released Friday have revealed.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) secured an opinion from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) determined that the bureau made improper use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s Section 702, a tool allowing for the warrantless surveillance of foreigners abroad.

The FISC opinion, according to The Hill, states that “[i]n June 2022, an analyst conducted four queries of Section 702 information using the last names of a U.S. Senator and a state senator, without further limitation.” The FISC opinion does not name the individuals in question.

It further stated that in October 2022, “a Staff Operations Specialist ran a query using the Social Security number of a state judge who “had complained to [the] FBI about alleged civil right violations perpetrated by a municipal chief of police.”

Section 702 of the Act was adopted in 2008 and grants the Intelligence Community considerable powers to surveil foreign actors, though critics have contended that the tool has enabled improper surveillance of Americans.

The article notes:

“The FBI continues to break the rules put in place to protect Americans, running illegal searches on public officials including a U.S. senator, and it’s long past time for Congress to step in,” he continued. “As Congress debates reauthorizing Section 702, these opinions make clear why fundamental reforms are urgently needed.”

The article concludes:

Section 702 is set to expire at the end of the year and Intelligence Community leaders have urged Congress to renew it, though the revelations of misuse have led some lawmakers to adopt a hostile stance on such an action.

Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz in July introduced a resolution to support allowing the measure to expire on time.

“The persistent abuse of Section 702 of FISA underscores the disturbing trend of our federal government being weaponized against its people. The blatant misuse of warrantless surveillance powers targeting Americans’ communications should not be accepted or reauthorized. We must uphold national security without sacrificing the constitutional rights of our fellow Americans,” he said at the time.

I agree.

The Department Of Injustice

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On Tuesday, Just the News posted an article about the testimony of a retired FBI supervisor regarding the irregularities in the investigation of Hunter Biden.

The article reports:

A retired FBI supervisor’s account to Congress of how the bureau tipped off Joe Biden’s team in December 2020 about plans to conduct a surprise interview of his son Hunter not only corroborates a key allegation from two IRS whistleblowers, it further paints a portrait of unusual meddling into the investigation of the first family’s overseas business dealings and taxes.

From search warrants denied to critical evidence kept from the investigative team, three experienced federal law enforcement agents have now offered Congress significant testimony and proof that the Hunter Biden probe did not follow FBI or IRS norms and left veteran investigators as well as the powerful House chairman seeing political favoritism and undue interference.

“The Justice Department’s efforts to cover up for the Bidens reveals a two-tiered system of justice that sickens the American people,” House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said Monday night after releasing a summary of the FBI supervisory agent’s account.

Comer’s counterpart on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, dropped a bombshell of his own Monday, saying the FBI has “materially” impacted Congress’ efforts to unmask the weaponization of law enforcement by refusing to turn over evidence and that Director Christopher Wray could be held in contempt as early as next week.

The retired FBI agent, a new witness for Congress, gave his account to Comer’s panel in a transcribed interview Monday, corroborating several aspects of the account IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley and a second agent gave Congress last month.

The swamp in Washington is deep and wide. I can’t help but think that there are two things in play here–wait for the statute of limitations to run out or hope that the Republicans lose their majority in the House of Representatives in 2024. At any rate, I do question whether there will be any accountability for the millions the Biden have received for their influence peddling.

The Covering Up Continues

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On Monday, Just the News posted an article about the upcoming appearance by Devon Archer before the House Oversight committee. As you may recall, Devon Archer is a one-time business partner of Hunter Biden. Devon Archer is currently facing jail time for fleecing investors in a bond deal involving a Native American tribe. He has stated that he was unaware fraud had occurred with the deal.

The article reports:

He’s also days away from becoming the most consequential witness to date in the GOP-led House hearings into alleged Biden family corruption. Archer knows how and why Hunter Biden landed on the Burisma board and was courted by oligarchs from Russia to China. He knows what, if any, business partners got access to then-Vice President Joe Biden and what, if any, favors the 46th president may have bestowed on Hunter Biden’s business suitors.

He also knows well the labyrinth of companies through which Hunter Biden moved and took money.

…Archer is slated to tell the House Oversight and Accountability Committee what he knows during a transcribed interview the week of July 24.

Oddly enough, there are some hurdles to his testimony:

But just days away from that crucial appearance, he lacks access to a critical cache of evidence: tens of thousands of pages of emails, memos, documents and text messages the FBI seized from him and his businesses around the time of his arrest in spring 2016.

Like most legal defense teams in major criminal cases, Archer’s lawyers had the vast tranche of documents the FBI returned to them during trial discovery and digitized memos so they could be quickly searched in trial preparation.

However, the New York firm that did that work still has the documents.

Archer was overdue on paying some of the bills for the storage but months ago made the payments and removed any liens, court records show. But the firm has yet to provide a digital copy of the document collection, according to memos reviewed by Just the News and interviews.

Efforts to secure the documents were continuing this week without an immediate resolution, the memos show, raising the possibility that Congress may need to subpoena the records for the evidence to be available in time for his transcribed interview.

Is anyone willing to make a wager on whether or not those documents will ever appear or whether or not they will be heavily redacted if they do ever appear?

As Expected

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On Tuesday, Just the News reported that the Secret Service has refused to honor a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records regarding the cocaine found in the White House.

The article reports:

The U.S. Secret Service on Tuesday declined to honor a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for communications related to its investigation of the cocaine found at the White House, saying that to release those materials would compromise the investigation.

Bloomberg investigative reporter Jason Leopold posted the response from the Secret Service to his request, in which the agency stated that “disclosure could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.”

The rest of the letter outlined Leopold’s options to challenge that determination but offered no other explanation for the agency’s refusal.

…The White House has largely declined to address the matter in public, prompting further scrutiny and indeed speculation that the culprit may have been someone of importance. The Secret Service has not publicly identified any suspects as of press time.

There are security cameras all through the White House. There is Secret Service personnel in various locations. The investigation should have been completed in a matter of hours. If you honestly believe at this point that no one has any idea who the cocaine belongs to, you are incredibly naive. Someone is being protected. I have no idea who is being protected, but someone is. The administration that claimed it would be ‘the most transparent administration’ in history is covering something up.

Is It Already Fixed?

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On Wednesday, Just the News reported that despite concerns from cybersecurity experts, the State of Georgia will not update its voting machines until after the 2024 election. Sounds like they are planning to close the barn door right after the horse leaves.

The article reports:

A nearly 2-year-old report was finally made public last week and showed Dominion voting machines had significant vulnerabilities, which led the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to issue a public advisory last year based on the findings.

However, Georgia election officials say that the machines won’t be updated until after the 2024 elections because it’s such a massive undertaking.

The report was completed in July 2021 by University of Michigan Professor of Computer Science and Engineering J. Alex Halderman with Professor Drew Springall, of Auburn University, and focused in part on vulnerabilities they found after examining Dominion’s ImageCast X Ballot Marking Devices for three months.

A redacted copy of the report was released June 14 by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division. ​

The report was completed on behalf of the plaintiffs in the case of Curling v. Raffensperger and found the Dominion machines are vulnerable to vote flipping.

Halderman suggested the machines were capable of being manipulated in mere minutes by bad actors, saying the QR codes on printed ballots could be altered and malware installed on individual machines “with only brief physical access.”

That sounds like a problem that really should be corrected before another election.

The article concludes:

However, in the judge’s order making the report public, she said CISA and the parties in the lawsuit agreed that the proposed redactions to the report appropriately safeguarded against election security concerns.

Dominion settled a lawsuit with Fox News in April for $787 million regarding claims made on the news station’s channel about the company’s voting machines.

Phill Kline, director of The Amistad Project, told Just the News on Wednesday that one of the problems with the issue of voting machines’ integrity in election systems is the disagreement among experts.

He also said officials overseeing elections don’t have the knowledge to understand how the machines work and have to rely on the companies that created them to make sure everything works properly.

“Machines are not transparent, and that’s the problem,” Kline said. He also said the transparency issue is a “key reason Americans are losing faith in elections,” and that they cannot get their questions answered about how elections are conducted  “in a manner that’s understandable.”

Are you convinced that there is not a problem?

A Move Toward Transparency

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When the Democrats put together January 6th Committee, they didn’t plan on the Republicans taking over the House of Representatives. The idea was that the information and video that did not support the narrative of a violent insurrection would never see the light of day. However, that plan ran into a snag when the Republicans took control of the House of Rerpresentatives.

On Wednesday, The Daily Caller reported:

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia announced Wednesday that the tapes showing the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol building would be released to more journalists.

John Solomon of JustTheNews.com, Julie Kelly of American Greatness and an unnamed outlet will receive “unfettered access” to the over 41,000 hours of video footage of the Capitol riot, the Georgia congresswoman posted on Twitter.

“As I promised the J6 tapes will be released. @SpeakerMcCarthy will give @jsolomonReports, @Julie_kelly2, and a third outlet unfettered access to the J6 tapes,” Greene tweeted. “Their reporting on it starts tomorrow!”

Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the Speaker of the House, previously provided then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a co-founder of the Daily Caller and Daily Caller News Foundation, access to the tapes, Axios reported. Previous reports indicated that the amount of footage was 14,000 hours.

I believe that showing the video tapes of January 6th was one of the reasons Tucker Carlson got fired. I also believe that the fact that only one or two sections of the video were ever shown on his show when he was granted access to the tapes was the result of pressure from Fox News not to show the video. It will be interesting to see if the media outlets that now have access to the videos have the courage to make them public.

Fighting The Deep State And Winning

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Facing a potential contempt of Congress vote, FBI Director Christopher Wray relented and has agreed to bring a subpoenaed document from the Biden family investigation to Capitol Hill for lawmakers to inspect on Monday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer announced Friday.

On Friday, Just the News reported:

Facing a potential contempt of Congress vote, FBI Director Christopher Wray relented and has agreed to bring a subpoenaed document from the Biden family investigation to Capitol Hill for lawmakers to inspect on Monday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer announced Friday.

The document in question, an FD-1023, contains uncorroborated allegations that an informant provided the FBI in June 2020 alleging that Joe Biden, when he was vice president, was engaged in a bribery scheme to change US policy in return for $5 million to his family’s businesses, lawmakers have said.

Congress was alerted to the document by an FBI whistleblower who raised concerns the allegations were never fully investigated. Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa demanded to see the document, and Comer followed with a subpoena.

As recently as Wednesday, Wray indicated he would not turn over the document in compliance with the subpoena, but would let lawmakers come read it at the FBI. But a deal was struck late Thursday for the FBI to bring the document to the Capitol, officials said.

“Chairman Comer will receive a briefing from the FBI and review the document on Monday,” his committee told Just the News in a statement. “Chairman Comer has been clear that anything short of producing the FD-1023 form to the House Oversight Committee is not compliance with his subpoena. This unclassified record contains pages of details that need to be investigated further by the House Oversight Committee.”

It will be interesting to see if the document is redacted or if the specific contents of the document are made public. Be aware of the timing of this release–if the Democrats want to run someone other than Joe Biden for President in 2024, they have to remove him as a candidate by August of this year in order to put together a proper campaign. Notice that there are currently a lot of negative things being revealed about the Biden family’s business dealings. Timing is never an accident.

Ford Cars Will Still Have AM Radios

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On Tuesday, Just the News posted an article about Ford Motor Company and their reversal of the decision not to put AM Radios in their cars next year.

The article reports:

The Ford Motor Company on Tuesday announced that it would not eliminate AM radio from nearly all of its new vehicles amid considerable pushback from lawmakers and consumers.

“After speaking with policy leaders about the importance of AM broadcast radio as a part of the emergency alert system, we’ve decided to include it on all 2024 [Ford] & [Lincoln] vehicles,” wrote CEO Jim Farley on Twitter. “For any owners of Ford EVs without AM broadcast capability, we’ll offer a software update.”

“Customers can currently listen to AM radio content in a variety of ways in our vehicles – including via streaming – and we will continue to innovate to deliver even better in-vehicle entertainment and emergency notification options in the future,” he continued. “Thanks to our product development and manufacturing teams for their quick response to make this change for our customers.”

The company had not originally planned to include AM radio in most of its new vehicles and had cited research indicating that less than 5% of in-car listening came from AM stations. The decision generated significant backlash from right-leaning pundits and lawmakers.

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle noted that AM radio is a key component in the U.S. Emergency Alert System, with Wisconsin GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher and New Jersey Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer urging Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell to assert the importance of maintaining AM radio in vehicles.  Talk radio host John Catsimatidis and former Vice President Mike Pence also teamed up to create a public service announcement in support of AM radio.

AM Radio is also the home of a lot of conservative talk shows. There is a possibility that the company may have been under pressure to eliminate AM Radio as part of the continuing effort to squelch conservative speech.

Where Are The Fact-Checkers?

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On Friday, Just the News posted an article detailing some of the lies being told about raising the debt ceiling.

The article notes:

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s office is disputing reports on social media and websites that Republicans are demanding President Biden agree to work requirements on a litany of social services programs in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.

A headline on the website Raw Story declared, “McCarthy demands work requirements on ‘all the programs’ including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP.”

The story was also retweeted by a former Obama campaign official Jon Cooper. 

“Kevin McCarthy is demanding that WORK REQUIREMENTS be added to receive not only Medicaid but also Medicare and Social Security. He doesn’t think Americans have earned their benefits – despite paying into all three programs over the course of their entire working lives,” Cooper wrote in another post Wednesday.

However, House Republicans’ push for work requirements as part of an agreement to raise the nation’s debt limit would apply only to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

The article notes:

The plan proposed by McCarthy and other GOP leaders to enforce work-related requirements in these federal benefit programs would not apply to Social Security and Medicare, contrary to information spreading on social media, the speaker’s office confirmed.

The article also notes that most Americans support work-requirements for some federal programs.

The article concludes:

Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz argued that most Americans support work requirements as opposed to issuing benefits without any strings attached.

“An overwhelming majority of Americans support a work requirement for welfare,” Cruz said.

He also suggested that Biden doesn’t support such a requirement but once did.

“You know someone [whom] President Joe Biden ought to listen to? That would be Senator Joe Biden who has previously voted for work requirements for welfare. But now he’s handed the Democrat Party over to the crazy socialist wing of the party that doesn’t want anyone to work,” he said.

Democrats point to analysis from liberal organizations such as The Center for American Progress, which have concluded that work requirements would not work under programs like Medicaid. 

Most Americans are generous people who support charity. However, the government bureaucracy has grown so bloated that it is very easy for people to scam the welfare system. When social programs were handled locally, it was easy to tell who was gaming the system and who was not. Now there is a thought in the back of the basic bureaucrat’s mind that says, “If I get everyone off welfare, I will lose my job.” This is not a good business model.

A Sad Tale Of A Once Wonderful American City

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On Saturday, Just the News posted the following headline:

Half of all Chicagoans will witness a shooting by age 40, study finds

The article reports:

Researchers found the numbers are even more stark when broken down along racial barriers, with over half of all Black and Latino study participants by that age having already witnessed such an occurrence, compared to one-fourth of all white participants.

“We expected levels of exposure to gun violence to be high, but not this high,” study author Charles Lanfear, an assistant professor at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology, told Fox32Chicago.com. “Our findings are frankly startling and disturbing. A substantial portion of Chicago’s population could be living with trauma as a result of witnessing shootings and homicides, often at a very young age.”

Researchers said the average age for witnessing a shooting was 14 years old, with women only slightly less likely than men to have undergone such a dark experience. Data also shows men were much more likely to be gunshot victims.

In May 2022, The Chicago Tribune reported the following:

In its 2021 annual report on state gun laws, the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gave Illinois an A-, making it eighth in the nation for the strength of its gun laws. California, New York, Connecticut and New Jersey were among states that ranked higher.

While the nonprofit applauded Illinois’ universal background checks, waiting periods and domestic violence gun laws, it calls for the state to ban the manufacture or sale of untraceable DIY ghost guns and impose restrictions on assault weapons, large-capacity magazines and bulk firearm purchases.

In August, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law a measure requiring background checks for private gun sales or transfers beginning in 2024.

The state law, introduced in the wake of a February 2019 warehouse shooting in suburban Aurora that left five dead and six wounded, also charges an Illinois State Police task force with taking guns from people who’ve had their FOID cards revoked but haven’t turned over their weapons, and streamlines the process for renewing FOID cards and concealed carry licenses.

The article at The Chicago Tribune notes how successful the State Police program was:

A 2019 Tribune investigation found that as many as 30,000 guns were potentially in the hands of people who’d had their FOID cards revoked in the previous four years. A follow-up review last year found improved compliance but also an increase in the number of firearms that were unaccounted for.

Since criminals are not known for following laws, why do people think more gun laws are the answer? We need a moral revolution in America. We need parents who take the time to raise moral children, and we need morality emphasized as a good thing in our schools. That will solve the murder problem in cities like Chicago.

Someone Did Not Do Their Job

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On Tuesday, Just the News reported that thorough background checks were not done on employees at the emergency holding centers hurriedly opened by the Office of Refugee Resettlement to accommodate a Biden-era surge of unaccompanied minors at the southern border.

The article reports:

The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) visited an influx care facility (ICF) and 10 emergency intake sites (EIS) opened to shelter “an unprecedented number of unaccompanied children” arriving at the border under President Biden to determine whether the facilities were complying with required background checks on employees.

The watchdog found that “ORR’s ICF and EISs did not conduct or document all required background checks or did not conduct the checks in a timely manner.”

According to the report:

    • FBI fingerprint checks were “not conducted or documented” for 174 of 229 EIS employees, while another 25 were “conducted but not in a timely manner.” Only 30 were “conducted in a timely manner.”
    • Background checks for child abuse and neglect were not conducted for 200 of 229 EIS employees, with 20 conducted but not promptly, and only 9 conducted promptly. “For 51 of the 200 employees, ORR had waived the Child Abuse and Neglect (CA/N) check requirement,” the report noted.

Federal regulations explicitly prohibit ORR — tasked with the “care and placement” of unaccompanied migrant children (UAC) — from “hiring or enlisting the services” of anyone to work with children if they have any documented history of sexual misconduct. However, the ORR is allowed to “waive or modify” background checks so long as it’s “for good cause,” like an emergency. 

Of a required 78 sex offender registry checks, 42 were “not conducted or documented,” and another 11 were “conducted but not in a timely manner,” according to the report. Less than a third, 25, were “conducted in a timely manner.”

According to the Assistant Regional Inspector General Sylvie Witten, the ORR “did not waive the DOJ sex offender registry check” and many were not vetted through it despite being “required.”

In today’s world, people who want to volunteer in the church Sunday School program routinely undergo background checks. It is a major breach of trust that the people working with underage unaccompanied migrant children were not properly vetted.

 

An Odd Couple Introduces Common Sense

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On Tuesday, Just the News reported that Florida Republican Representative Matt Gaetz and New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have introduced a bill banning lawmakers, their spouses, or dependents from trading stocks. If that bill is ever passed, it will seriously diminish the incomes of the people who serve in Congress.

The article reports:

House Problem Solvers Caucus co-chair Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn., and Democratic Illinois Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi joined the pair in introducing the Bipartisan Restoring Faith in Government Act on Tuesday.

The bill further grants lawmakers a 90-day window during which they must divest themselves of their existing stocks. Moreover, should the spouse of a lawmaker receive “any financial instrument” as compensation for their main employment, they will have 90 days to sell it from the date they are contractually permitted to do so.

Covered individuals may still invest in “widely held investment funds” or government bonds.

The article concludes:

“As long as concerns about insider trading hang over the legislative process, Congress will never regain the trust of the American people. Our responsibility in Congress is to serve the people, not hedge bets on the stock market,” Gaetz warned.

AOC, meanwhile, echoed his remarks, saying “[t]he ability to individually trade stock erodes the public’s trust in government.”

“Members of Congress must be focused on their constituents, not their stock portfolios,” Krishnamoorthi added.

That is bipartisan legislation that most Americans can support. Unfortunately, I rather doubt it will become law.

This Really Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone

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On Monday, PJ Media posted an interesting article about the fifty-one national security officials who wrote a letter suggesting that the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop reported by The New York Post were Russian disinformation, and that there was no proof the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden. This turned out to be a rather ridiculous claim after Hunter Biden’s attorneys sued the computer repair shop owner for invasion of privacy after it released the information. Why would he do that if the information was bogus? But it gets even better.

The article reports:

For the past couple of years, we’ve been led to believe that the letter from 51 national security officials was some sort of spontaneous, grassroots effort by the intelligence community to warn us about the potential foreign influence behind Hunter Biden’s laptop.

The laptop has since been confirmed to be legitimate, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence confirmed that there was no foreign disinformation campaign involved. But new information from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and congressional investigators, with the help of two Obama-era CIA officials, has revealed a new twist in the story. The investigation has uncovered evidence linking the letter dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation during the 2020 election to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

…Jordan revealed to Just the News that a report on government weaponization is set to be released later this month, detailing the individuals involved in the letter and the evidence linking them to the Biden campaign. Jordan suggested that the letter may have been a significant interference in the presidential election and was motivated by political considerations. Jordan declined to provide more details as further witness interviews are being conducted this week.

“It was all done with politics, and it looks like there was some real connections with the Biden campaign,” Jordan said during an interview late last week on the John Solomon Reports podcast.

The article concludes:

I’m sure the question on everyone’s mind is: who in the Biden campaign was involved in this scheme? While Jordan has confirmed that evidence linking the letter dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop to the Biden campaign has been uncovered, he says specific ties to the Biden campaign will be disclosed in the interim report.

The corruption in our federal government never ceases to amaze me.