Tag Archives: Just The News

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.

 

Is Lying To The FBI Only Important Sometimes?

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On Monday, Just the News posted an article about a recent development in the Special Counsel John Durham investigation.

The article reports:

Special Counsel John Durham is revealing new smoking gun evidence, a text message that shows a Clinton campaign lawyer lied to the FBI, while putting the courts on notice he is prepared to show the effort to smear Donald Trump with now-disproven Russia collusion allegations was a “conspiracy.”

In a bombshell court filing late Monday night, Durham for the first time suggested Hillary Clinton’s campaign, her researchers and others formed a “joint venture or conspiracy” for the purpose of weaving the collusion story to harm Trump’s election chances and then the start of his presidency.

“These parties acted as ‘joint venturer[s]’ and therefore should be ‘considered as co-conspirator[s],'” he wrote.

Durham also revealed he has unearthed a text message showing Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann falsely told the FBI he was not working on behalf of any client when he delivered now-discredited anti-Trump research in the lead-up to the 2016 election. In fact, he was working for the Clinton campaign and another client, prosecutors say.

The existence of the text message between Sussmann and then-FBI General Counsel James Baker was revealed in a court filing late Monday night by Durham’s team. Prosecutors said they intend to show Sussmann gave a false story to the FBI but then told the truth about working on behalf of the Clinton campaign when he later testified to Congress.

So why are we hearing this now? Remember, the news is controlled by the Democrats. They do not want Joe Biden to run for President in 2024. I would say based on this story that they also do not want Hillary Clinton to run for President in 2024. The news media is clearing the way for someone–I have no idea who. I have a few guesses, but at this point they are merely guesses.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. Then as yourself why this information was not available before 2020. Then ask yourself if the corruption is all through the Democrat party or if the Clintons were an isolated example.

A New Venture

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Many of us have appreciated the efforts and successes of Project Veritas in recent years. I was stunned when James O’Keefe was suddenly removed from the Board of Directors. Well, you can’t keep a good man down for long.

On Wednesday, Just the News reported the following:

Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe on Wednesday announced his latest project following his departure from the group.

In a video posted to Twitter, O’Keefe announced the creation of the O’Keefe Media Group, which will include a handful of dedicated journalists with whom he has long collaborated.

“I spent 14 years creating the most effective, non-profit newsroom this country has ever seen,” he said. “And in paving the way to establish citizen journalism, I have been defamed, arrested, raided, and ultimately removed from the organization I spent so much time developing the credibility of.”

“We are going to build an army of investigators and exposers. They have awakened a sleeping giant. I’m back,” he declared.

I am looking forward to James O’Keefe’s reporting in the future. He has done a lot of work to expose things Americans need to know about.

The Search For Equal Justice Under The Law

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On Saturday, PJ Media posted an article about the misplaced priorities of the current FBI.

The article reports:

Just The News reported Saturday that the feds have “politicized cases regarding Jan. 6 defendants and pro-lifers while retaliating against internal whistleblowers” as some of those same whistleblowers testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. And Fox News reported Thursday that according to another whistleblower, “the FBI created a threat tag following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year, but it later ‘shifted’ to focus on pro-life individuals,” as if they were the real threat.

George Hill, a retired supervisory intelligence analyst in the FBI’s Boston field office, testified that “the Washington Field Office pressured other field offices to investigate citizens for activities protected by the First Amendment.” The Washington feds wanted the Boston office “to open cases on, first, seven individuals who came up in a sweep of bank records served up by the Bank of America, and then a larger group of 140 Americans guilty of nothing more than riding buses to D.C. to attend former President Trump’s Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6, 2021.” Nor was this pressure singular: “Washington, Hill believes, applied similar pressure on the Philadelphia Field Office.”

Hill testified that on a nationwide call with all 56 FBI field offices, Steve Jensen, who was at that time the chief of the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Operations Center Section, asked the Philadelphia feds about their investigations of three individuals. “The Philadelphia office said the individuals had posted on social media about being pro-Second Amendment and anti-abortion, but that it didn’t mean they were ‘insurrectionists seeking to overturn our democracy,’ Hill recalled.” This cut no ice with Jensen, who shot back: “I don’t give a blank, they’re all bleeping terrorists, and we’re going to round them up.”

That last sentence is frightening.

The article continues:

When the feds did round them up, they did so in the most brutal manner possible. Former FBI SWAT team member Steve Friend testified “that after raising concerns about using a SWAT team to arrest a subject of the Jan. 6 investigation, he was ordered off the job for a day. Friend explained that the Jan. 6 subject was cooperating with the FBI and willing to surrender voluntarily, so he was concerned that the bureau wasn’t using the least intrusive methods possible to arrest them.” Clearly the feds were not interested in being non-intrusive. They wanted to send a message, and they did with the arrests of pro-life activist Mark Houck.

Meanwhile, another FBI whistleblower, Garret O’Boyle, was suspended after he testified to Congress about the feds’ politicization. He explained: “I thought the FBI was being weaponized against agents or anybody who wanted to step forward and talk about malfeasance inside the agency prior to this. But now, after what has happened to me, I don’t think I can ever be convinced that it’s anything different than that.”

It may be time to end both the FBI and the CIA as both have greatly overstepped their bounds.

Now They Tell Us

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On Tuesday, Just the News posted an article about some recent discoveries regarding Dominion voting machines.

The article reports:

Dominion Voting Systems employees have acknowledged serious problems with the company’s technology, saying, for example, that a bug led to “INCORRECT results,” according to discovery cited in the defense brief in Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News.

Dominion is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion for defamation after becoming a target of alleged conspiracy theories regarding its voting machines being hacked and flipping election results.

In a legal brief made public Thursday, the news outlet cited information obtained from Dominion through discovery. 

In a 2018 email Fox News obtained from Dominion Director of Product Strategy and Security Eric Coomer, he acknowledged the company’s technology was marred by a “*critical* bug leading to INCORRECT results.”

“It does not get much worse than that,” he later added.

…In another 2019 email, Coomer wrote, “we don’t address our weaknesses effectively!”

Less than a week before the 2020 presidential election, Coomer conceded in an email that “our sh-t is just riddled with bugs.”

Mark Beckstrand, a Dominion Sales Manager, testified in a deposition that “other parties ‘have gotten ahold of [Dominion’s] equipment illicitly’ in the past,” according to the defense brief.

“Beckstrand,” the brief continues, “identified specific instances in Georgia and North Carolina and testified that a Dominion machine was ‘hacked’ in Michigan” and “confirmed that these security failures were ‘reported about in the news.'”

After the 2020 election, “a security expert told the media that Dominion ‘software should be designed to detect and prevent th[e] kind of glitch’ experienced in Antrim County, Michigan,” according to the defense, and “Coomer told Dominion Vice President Kay Stimson: ‘He’s not entirely wrong.'”

A conspiracy is only a conspiracy until it turns out to be true.

Will There Be Accountability?

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We have reached the point where some people will do anything to win an election. Inventing tales of foreign collusion, withholding information about a protest that got out of control, and releasing what were supposed to be ‘sealed’ records.

My earliest recollection of releasing ‘sealed’ records was the 2004 Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate in Illinois.

In August of 2012, Townhall noted:

One month before the 2004 Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, Obama was down in the polls, about to lose to Blair Hull, a multimillionaire securities trader. But then the Chicago Tribune leaked the claim that Hull’s second ex-wife, Brenda Sexton, had sought an order of protection against him during their 1998 divorce proceedings.

Those records were under seal, but as The New York Times noted: “The Tribune reporter who wrote the original piece later acknowledged in print that the Obama camp had ‘worked aggressively behind the scenes’ to push the story.” Many people said Axelrod (David Axelrod) had “an even more significant role — that he leaked the initial story.”

Fast forward to today. On February 19th, Just the News reported:

In an unprecedented breach, the Air Force improperly released to a research firm tied to Democrats’ congressional campaign arm the confidential personnel files of eleven members of the military, including one involving a retired lieutenant colonel running for office as a Republican that detailed how she had been sexually assaulted in the Air Force, Congress has been told.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers and House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer are demanding that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin explain how he will prevent future breaches of military members’ private information while pressing to know if there will be criminal prosecutions.

…In January, Green received a letter from acting Compliance Division Chief William J. Alexander Jr. acknowledging that her records were released “without proper redaction.”

“We found that your information was released by the Air Force [Personnel] Center to a third-party (‘Due Diligence’), a private company specializing in public record research without your consent via a SF-180 request,” he wrote. 

Coincidentally, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has paid more than $100,000 to the Due Diligence Group since 2021 (source OpenSecrets.org). Until people actually go to jail for this foolishness, it will not stop.

 

 

 

The Fight For Freedom Continues

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On Monday, Just the News posted an article about the continuing fight against vaccine mandates by several marines [in spite of the fact that the DOD rescinded the mandate in compliance with the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act)].

The article reports:

Several members of the U.S. Marines are still fighting the U.S. Department of Defense in a lawsuit they filed over its August 2021 COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

The DOD asked the court to dismiss the case after Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was forced to drop the mandate by Congress. President Joe Biden, who strongly opposed repealing the mandate, agreed to repealing it when he signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law in December.

Liberty Counsel, the Orlando-based religious freedom legal advocacy organization representing Navy and Marine Corps service members, filed a motion with the court on Wednesday asking the court to continue the case. It pointed to statements made in the Defense secretary’s latest guidance that indicate he would enact another COVID-vaccine mandate in the future and to the administration’s argument that the district court has no jurisdiction over military matters, a claim the presiding judge refutes.

The article concludes:

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “Repealing the COVID shot mandate for military members does not moot this case. Joe Biden and the Department of Defense continue to argue courts have no jurisdiction over the military, an argument that the courts have soundly rejected. The history of this case clearly demonstrates the open violation of the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This lawlessness must end. Our military members who love God and America have been horribly abused and they must be honored again.”

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., filed companion bills that would require the DOD to reinstate any service member separated solely for COVID-19 vaccine status who wants to return to service, to credit all service members with the time of involuntary separation for retirement pay calculations, restore their rank if they were demoted, and compensate them for any pay and benefits lost due to demotions.

The bills also would prohibit the Defense secretary from issuing any replacement COVID-19 vaccine mandates without Congressional approval, require “general” discharges to be changed to “honorable” and require any records with adverse actions based solely on COVID-19 vaccine status to be expunged.

The vaccine has not been around long enough for us to evaluate its long-term effects. Why are we demanding that young people who are not at risk from Covid take an unproven vaccine?

The Death Of The Fourth Estate

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On Thursday, Just the News posted an article about the American government’s latest efforts to muffle the free speech of any American who does not agree with the aims of the government.

The article reports:

The government’s campaign to fight “misinformation” has expanded to adapt military-grade artificial intelligence once used to silence the Islamic State (ISIS) to quickly identify and censor American dissent on issues like vaccine safety and election integrity, according to grant documents and cyber experts.

Some of us have real questions as to what constitutes “misinformation.” Vaccine safety is an issue for those who have been impacted by the side effects of the Covid vaccine. There are an awful lot of people under the age of 40 experiencing sudden (and sometimes fatal) heart problems. Dissent is part of what made America great, and it should not be discouraged. I am all for protests–I am not for riots, and I think it’s time the media learned the difference.

The article continues:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded several million dollars in grants recently to universities and private firms to develop tools eerily similar to those developed in 2011 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in its Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC) program.

DARPA said those tools were used “to help identify misinformation or deception campaigns and counter them with truthful information,” beginning with the Arab Spring uprisings in the the Middle East that spawned ISIS over a decade ago. 

The initial idea was to track dissidents who were interested in toppling U.S.-friendly regimes or to follow any potentially radical threats by examining political posts on Big Tech platforms. 

DARPA set four specific goals for the program:

    1. “Detect, classify, measure and track the (a) formation, development and spread of ideas and concepts (memes), and (b) purposeful or deceptive messaging and misinformation.
    2. Recognize persuasion campaign structures and influence operations across social media sites and communities.
    3. Identify participants and intent, and measure effects of persuasion campaigns.
    4. Counter messaging of detected adversary influence operations.

This sounds like something that belongs in a dictatorship–not a republic.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is frightening. There is nothing in our Constitution that allows this sort of interference with the free thinking of the American people.

Some Good News For Parents And Athletes

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On January 6th, Just the News posted an article about a recent decision by the full 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The article reports:

Days after the full 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Florida high school’s requirement that students use the restroom for their sex, calling it an “immutable characteristic” under Title IX, U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin upheld West Virginia’s Save Women’s Sports law.

“While some females may be able to outperform some males, it is generally accepted that, on average, males outperform females athletically because of inherent physical differences between the sexes,” Goodwin wrote. 

The transgender plaintiff acknowledged that “circulating testosterone in males creates a biological difference in athletic performance,” the opinion said. Goodwin cannot conclude “the state’s classification based on biological sex is not substantially related to its interest in providing equal athletic opportunities for females.”

The 11th Circuit and Goodwin’s rulings are a reversal of fortunes for the ACLU, which recently convinced the 2nd Circuit to uphold Connecticut’s transgender sports policy and blocked Idaho’s pioneering Fairness in Women’s Sports Act in trial court in 2020. 

The 9th Circuit heard mootness arguments in May 2021 based on plaintiff Lindsay Hecox’s uncertain return to Boise State University, remanding the transgender competitor’s challenge to Idaho law, but is now considering another appeal.

U.S. District Judge David Nye ruled last summer the case was not moot due to Hecox’s spring 2022 return, participation in women’s club soccer and intention to try out for women’s track and cross-country.

Are we finally going to reach a point where we realize that there are basic differences between men and women? How many women have lost scholarship opportunities because they were forced to compete against men? It really is time that we ‘follow the science’ as some politicians like to say.

Something To Watch Closely

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On December 30th, Just the News posted an article about some new regulations coming down from the Environmental Protection Agency. First of all, laws are supposed to be made by elected, accountable Congressmen–not be unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats.

The article reports:

The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing rules for how it will implement a controversial part of the Clean Water Act.

The waters of the United States, or WOTUS, definition details that the EPA sets the threshold and exceptions of what waterways fall under federal jurisdiction. A waterway, from rivers to road ditches, that fall under the federal umbrella under WOTUS can only be altered with EPA permission.

The final rule change goes back in time, reinstating the rules for navigable waters, seas, interstate waters and upstream sources. The agency says the final rule reverts policy back to what it was before it was expanded in 2015.

“When Congress passed the Clean Water Act 50 years ago, it recognized that protecting our waters is essential to ensuring healthy communities and a thriving economy,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “Following extensive stakeholder engagement, and building on what we’ve learned from previous rules, EPA is working to deliver a durable definition of WOTUS that safeguards our nation’s waters, strengthens economic opportunity, and protects people’s health while providing greater certainty for farmers, ranchers, and landowners.”

The final proposal was met with criticism by road builders, who say applying WOTUS to road ditches would undermine key provisions in President Joe Biden’s infrastructure law.

The article concludes:

In June 2021, the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers announced it intended to redefine WOTUS.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard Sackett v. EPA, a case filed against the agency by an Idaho landowner, in October. The court is expected to release an opinion in early 2023.

Something To Watch

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On Thursday, Just the News posted an article about the ongoing trial regarding the gubernatorial election in Arizona. There were some very odd aspects of this election, and some of them are being revealed in court by whistleblower’s testimony.

The article reports:

A top Maricopa County elections official admitted Thursday in the Kari Lake election challenge trial that incorrect Election Day changes to ballot-on-demand printer settings were a factor in ballots being rejected by tabulators.

That  is important because a lot of voters who voted on election day gave up when the voting machines refused to tabulate their ballots. Essentially, they never got to vote.

The article continues:

Lake, the 2022 Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee, is suing her Democratic opponent, Governor-elect and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs; Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer; the county Board of Supervisors; and county Director of Elections Scott Jarrett.

Lake’s case alleges the “number of illegal votes cast in Arizona’s general election … far exceeds the 17,117 vote margin” between her and Hobbs.

Jarrett, who testified as a witness for the plaintiff on Wednesday and as a witness for the defendants on Thursday, admitted under direct examination by defense counsel that the county is conducting a root cause analysis of the Election Day issues. During this post-election analysis, the county found last month that one of the problems with ballot-on-demand printers was a “fit-to-paper” or “shrink-to-fit” setting adjusted on Election Day, Jarrett said.

Maricopa County has admitted that 70 of its 223 vote centers experienced ballot printer issues on Election Day, while Lake alleges in her lawsuit that about 132 of them did.

The real answer to the problem of this election is a do-over closely watched by both sides. The Secretary of State at the time of the election (now presumed Governor) needs to let the new Secretary of State oversee the new election. There was an obvious conflict of interest here that was never addressed.

There Are Definitely Some Problems With The Arizona Mid-Term Election

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On Friday, Just the News posted the following headline:

Top Maricopa election offices couldn’t reconcile 15k disparity in outstanding votes: internal email

You might think that would prevent you from certifying the election. But it didn’t. Maybe that was because the person in charge of certifying the election was also running for office.

The article reports:

Recently disclosed internal communications between top election officials in Arizona’s Maricopa County in the immediate aftermath of Election Day reveal that they struggled to reconcile a discrepancy of almost 16,000 in outstanding ballot totals. 

The governor’s race in Arizona was decided by a margin of just over 17,000 votes.

Maricopa County was plagued by numerous issues with ballot machines at many of its vote centers on Election Day, resulting in delays and long lines. 

Prior to a Maricopa County press conference with Board of Supervisors Chair Bill Gates and Recorder Stephen Richer on Nov. 10, Richer sent an email to Elections Director Scott Jarrett, Gates and others about a significant discrepancy between the county’s estimated remaining ballot totals and the number reported by the secretary of state’s office. 

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs was also the Democratic nominee for governor in the Nov. 8 election.

The article concludes:

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted to certify its election on Nov. 28, after listening to a flood of complaints from voters regarding issues they experienced trying to vote.

Mohave County certified its election “under duress,” after being threatened with possible felony charges by Secretary of State Hobbs’ office. Cochise County chose not to certify until a judge ordered them to, following a lawsuit against them filed by the secretary of state’s office.

According to a lawsuit filed by GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake challenging the administration of the 2022 election in Maricopa County, a poll found that 58.6% of Republican voters in the county “reported having issues while trying to cast a ballot on Election Day,” compared to 15.5% of Democrat voters. 

The lawsuit also alleges that 59% of Maricopa County’s 223 vote centers suffered ballot printer and tabulator failures. 

Unless we take the corruption out of our election system, we can expect to see more and more elections settled in the courts rather than in the ballot box. At times, the courts may be able to right a wrong, but even if that is the case, it sets a very bad precedent.

Conflict Of Interest?

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On Thursday, Just the News reported that Arizona Secretary of State (and gubernatorial candidate) Katie Hobbs threatened the Mohave County Board of Supervisors with legal action and criminal referral unless they certified the 2022 vote in their county.

The article reports:

Mohave County waited until Nov. 28, the deadline for Arizona counties to certify, to vote on the certification of its election because of the host of issues that plagued Election Day in Maricopa County, casting a cloud over Hobbs’ razor-thin victory in the gubernatorial race over GOP nominee Kari Lake, the consistent leader in pre-election opinion polling.

Two of the supervisors on the Mojave County board said they were voting to certify the election “under duress,” after being warned that they would “be arrested and charged with a felony” if they didn’t, according to the board chairman, Ron Gould.

While Mohave County’s own election was problem-free, the Board of Supervisors was concerned about the election issues in Maricopa County, said Gould.

“We believe that Mohave County voters were disenfranchised by the problems that they had in Maricopa County,” Gould said in an interview Wednesday on Real America’s Voice TV’s “The War Room.”

The article concludes:

“The Elections Integrity Unit (‘Unit’) of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office (‘AGO’) has received hundreds of complaints since Election Day pertaining to issues related to the administration of the 2022 General Election in Maricopa County,” Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright wrote.

“These complaints go beyond pure speculation, but include first-hand witness accounts that raise concerns regarding Maricopa’s lawful compliance with Arizona election law,” she said.

On Nov. 27, the county replied to the letter, saying that it followed the law on Election Day and the election problems were “regrettable.” The county insisted, however, that “every lawful voter was still able to cast his or her ballot.”

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors voted to certify its election on Monday, after listening to a flood of voter complaints regarding issues they experienced trying to vote on Election Day.

This is not okay. The problems need to be resolved before the election is certified.

Is This Bill Constitutional?

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The inaccurately named Respect for Marriage Act is currently making its way through the Senate. However, there are some questions about whether or not the bill is Constitutional. On Sunday, Just the News posted an article listing some of those concerns.

The article reports:

The bill, HR 8404, was introduced in the House by U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-NY, on July 18 and passed by a vote of 267-157 the next day. The U.S. Senate took it up on Nov. 14.

It would provide “statutory authority for same-sex and interracial marriages” and repeal several provisions of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The 1996 law received bipartisan support including from then U.S. Sen. Joe Biden and U.S. Rep. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, and from Democratic President Bill Clinton, who signed it.

When a constitutional amendment was proposed to ban same-sex marriage in 2006, Sen. Biden told Meet the Press’ Tim Russert, “I can’t believe the American people can’t see through this. We already have a law, the Defense of Marriage Act … where I voted and others … that marriage is between a man and a woman and states must respect that. … Why do we need a constitutional amendment? Marriage is between a man and a woman.”

Sixteen years later, President Biden now supports replacing DOMA provisions, which “define, for purposes of federal law, marriage as between a man and a woman and spouse as a person of the opposite sex,” with ROMA provisions “that recognize any marriage that is valid under state law,” according to the bill summary.

The article notes:

After their vote, Biden said, “Love is love, and Americans should have the right to marry the person they love,” adding their vote made “the United States one step closer to protecting that right in law.”

Schumer also said he had “zero doubt” the bill “will soon be law of the land.”

But multiple groups disagree, arguing it’s unconstitutional for the same reasons the Supreme Court struck down DOMA. Because the court already ruled Congress doesn’t have the constitutional authority to define marriage under Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, and because ROMA is nearly identical to DOMA, they argue it will also likely be struck down.

In a letter to Congress, the nonprofit religious freedom organization Liberty Counsel argues the court ruled in Windsor, “DOMA, because of its reach and extent, departs from this history and tradition of reliance on state law to define marriage.” It also ruled, “[b]y history and tradition the definition and regulation of marriage . . . has been treated as being within the authority and realm of the separate States.”

It is entirely possible that the way to solve this dilemma is to totally remove government from the institution of marriage. Leave marriage with the church–churches should have the right to marry or not to marry anyone they want to. A couple can find a church to do their wedding without having to worry about the government getting involved. A church certificate would be enough to prove the wedding, and the government would not need to be involved. In the case of a divorce, the church certificate would prove the marriage. Let the churches go on record for what they support and what they don’t support.